


The Value of Sparrows

by digitalcatnip



Series: The Value of Sparrows [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Armageddon, Asexual Relationship, Biblical Reinterpretation, But this entire story is me working through my religious trauma, Honestly this is probably sacrelige, Inspired by Good Omens, Internalized Homophobia, Lots of discussion of Wars, Mild descriptions of violence, Natural Disasters, Other, Religious Guilt, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, So make of that as you will, Some Externalized Homophobia, lots of death but not of main characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-04
Updated: 2020-07-05
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:21:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 57,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23471620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/digitalcatnip/pseuds/digitalcatnip
Summary: An angel of judgement and a death-dealing demon try to navigate themselves, their relationship, and their roles in the universe through the ages leading up to the end of the world.
Relationships: Original Character(s)/Original Character(s)
Series: The Value of Sparrows [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1867471
Comments: 3
Kudos: 6





	1. 500 BCE

**Author's Note:**

> Originated as Good Omens-verse OC fic and then turned into its own thing, but the inspiration is still strong (obviously lol.) As stated in the tags this entire thing is fairly angry and my way of working through some trauma I experienced growing up religious and closeted, so be prepared for that. Hopefully it's still enjoyable even if you can't relate (and if you do, have a solidarity hug/fist bump.)
> 
> Work is complete, and will update weekly on Sundays (for the irony!)
> 
> (Thank you to Tate for the suggestion of the Johnstown Flood chapter! You're a pal.)

_Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. […] Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows. **Matthew 10:29-31** ESV_

* * *

“The situation in Egypt is getting...dire,” Gabriel said, hands crossed behind his back. He stood in one of the main halls of Heaven, all shining white marble and curved plate glass windows that made the room feel like a two-hundred foot high bird cage. To his right, Michael was fiddling with a communication device that wouldn’t be invented for at least another seven thousand years, but time was fake and everyone knew it.

Sorush stared up at him, their gold eyes not quite focused on anything. “Yeah?”

Gabriel seemed to be struggling to keep a straight face. “God’s already spoken to Moses, we just need someone to actually go down there and do the dirty work.”

“The dirty work?”

“The persuading of the Egyptians to let the Jews go free.”

“I could do that if you like. I’m pretty good at it. I judged the Fallen during the Rebellion.”

If this were a cartoon, Gabriel would have had little steam clouds coming out of his ears. “Yes, I know, that’s why I’m telling _you_ instead of, say, Uriel.”

“Oh, I see.”

“Feel free to get creative,” Michael said, slipping her phone into one of her suit pockets. “You’re trying to get the Jews out of there by any means necessary, and the Almighty likes dramatic, you know. It’s good for press.”

Sorush honestly couldn’t remember if She did or not. They hadn’t been to Earth in a few hundred years. “Of course.”

Gabriel flashed a cold, empty smile. “Good. Great. Well, get to it.”

“Yup. Seeya,” Sorush said absently, turning away from the Archangels, trying to remember which way was the exit.

“Oh, Sorush,” Gabriel called from behind them. “Feel free to call up Yehudiah, if you need to. She’s given you permission to do whatever it takes to get Her people out of Egypt.”

  
  
  
  
  


They felt Yehudiah appear before they saw it, a sense of holy kinship that heralded the presence of other celestial beings. There was a slight crackle, and the air smelled of ozone as their fellow angel appeared in the space next to them, dressed in gray robes, pale hair falling down to its waist in waves.

“Classy,” it said, looking out over the river, bubbling thick and red. “I figured you had something to do with this.”

“Yep,” Sorush said, not blinking. “How did you know?”

“I can’t think of any other reason the whole Nile would turn to blood other than She’s gotten fed up,” Yehudiah muttered. “And when She’s fed up, She busts _you_ out.”

“I’m just happy to have something to do.”

“Yeah, well _I’m_ not happy I have to stand out here in the sun smelling rotting blood and dead fish while waiting for an Archangel to call me on the nearest harp or whatever and tell me to do the job I’m already here for.”

“ _Does_ it smell bad?”

Yehudiah stared at Sorush incredulously. “For Heaven’s- do you ever turn your vessel on?”

Sorush shrugged. “I don’t get out much.”

Yehudiah curled its nose and looked back down at the river. “I can tell.”

They sat on the little hill together, watching the fish gasp at the surface of what was once water and eventually die. Sorush noticed Yehudiah keeping count in its head, nodding ever so slightly each time. Amazing how it did that. Sorush could barely remember which end the wings went on half the time.

“So,” Yehudiah began suddenly. “Heaven still smell like weird incense and bureaucracy?”

“Yep.”

“Gabriel still…” It waved a hand. “Obnoxious?”

“Yep.”

“Glad to hear I haven’t missed anything over the last five hundred years.”

“Don’t you at least get tired of working all the time?”

Yehudiah shrugged. “I get to see the world. There’s some neat stuff out there. Ever been to Mesoamerica?”

“Nope.”

“Yeah, didn’t think so. God doesn’t seem concerned with the Mayans.” It leaned back on its arms, studying the Nile. “Wonder what got Her so pissed at the Middle East. It’s not the slavery, plenty of slaves in Asia and South America. Not the idol worship - every civilization on the planet’s got at least six other gods. Shoot, some of them kill each other to appease them, surely that would be worth some concern.”

“The Jews are Her chosen people,” Sorush said. “She’s protecting them.”

Yehudiah huffed. “Can’t see what’s so special about ‘em, really. They’re just like everyone else - fragile, mortal, and with absolutely no concept of what will and will not kill them.”

“That’s why She told them not to eat pork.”

Yehudiah laughed, genuinely, looking up at Sorush. “If not eating pork was the way to keep humans from dying so easily, I’d be out of a job.”

Sorush’s expression remained unchanged. “Do you like your job, Yehudiah?

“Eh?”

“You know. Dealing with dead people. Guiding their souls.”

There was a crust forming on the surface of the water now near the banks, where it was shallow enough to coagulate into thick clumps. The humans were starting to panic now.

Yehudiah’s eyes lost focus. “It’s what I was made for. So I guess I’m used to it.”

  
  
  
  


The next time they saw Yehudiah, Sorush was strolling through the city centre, relishing in the amount of humans they saw lined up at the physicians’ door, picking at open sores - their latest plague idea. They were giving the angel odd looks though, eyes drawn to their silver hair and gold eyes, so different from everyone else’s. Or maybe it was the huge gilded sword slung from their belt, bobbing against their right hip.

Yehudiah was sitting against a wall, a brush in one hand and ink in another, dutifully writing down some seemingly complicated characters onto a sheet of papyrus as a man rattled off numbers and scratched his arms. Its hands were black with ink, and it looked exhausted. Sorush wondered why it allowed itself to feel fatigue at all.

“Hello Yehudiah,” they said pleasantly, settling down next to it and peering over its shoulder. “Maths?”

“Sort of,” Yehudiah mumbled, tapping the end of the brush handle in a counting rhythm. These reed brushes were vastly inferior to the sheep’s-hair used in China, and it was taking longer than it liked to write all this down. “I’m taking count of all the _dead animals._ ” It gave Sorush a pointed glare.

“Sorry. I thought it’d be a good way to get the point across.”

Yehudiah continued to scribble on its papyrus in sloppy hieratic riddled with blots. “Well, it apparently didn’t work, and now I’m stuck here pretending to be mortal to get Azrael his numbers in the least tiring way possible. I know you’re just doing your job, but it’s making _mine_ harder. No more dying plagues, okay?”

“I can’t make promises. I was told to do whatever it takes."

“Can you at least not kill anything else for like...two more days, then?”

Sorush considered it. “I can do that.”

Yehudiah finished the entry given to it by the man with the boiled elbows. “I am sorry for your losses, I will let the Pharaoh know of them,” it said, dipping its head.

The man sighed, muttered a _thank you_ , and stepped aside to let the next in line recount their losses.

“Can you write?” Yehudiah asked, holding out the brush to Sorush. “I’m starving.”

Sorush stared blankly at the tools. “No.”

Yehudiah pinched its nose. “Oh, for- Right, you don’t get out.” It put a hand on Sorush’s arm, fingers glowing almost imperceptibly in the harsh midday sun as it blessed them with the knowledge of the local language. Sorush’s expression never changed, but when Yehudiah lifted its hand, they blinked, and nodded.

“Thanks. I’ll do my best,” they said.

“Cool. I’ll be back in an hour.”

  
  
  
  


Sorush found Yehudiah again the next day in the same city centre square, against the same wall, with a new roll of papyrus in its hand. The ground next to its sitting spot was charred black, portions of the wall behind it now crumbling.

It saw Sorush from a distance, eyes narrowing.

“I said no more deaths!” It snapped when Sorush sat down, brandishing the brush at their face. Drops of ink spattered onto Sorush’s white robes.

“Sorry. I didn’t think the storm would be that dangerous.”

“What about ‘fire and brimstone raining from the sky’ read as ‘not dangerous’ to you?”

“All of it?”

Yehudiah took a moment to fume, then turned back to its papyrus. “Humans don’t do well with fire and brimstone.”

“I have learned that now, yes. However, I _am_ supposed to convince the Egyptians to let the Jews leave by any means necessary.”

“Can you give me like, _one_ day off, though? I was up all night filing souls off for the boss, and now I’m having to sit in the sun again and take account of all the remaining animals that also got knocked off by your giant flaming rocks! I haven’t slept in days!”

Sorush considered it. “But I have to do _something_ major to them. Ruin the crops, or something. Do insects have souls?”

“Not my jurisdiction. Feel free to go completely ham with the bugs.”

They nodded. “I’ll do bugs again, then. Locusts maybe.”

“Locusts sounds _fantastic_.”

  
  
  


Yehudiah found them standing on the little hill outside of the city, looking out over the Nile, still full of stinking, rotten clots. They were a little beacon of heavenly light in the cloying, supernatural darkness that had fallen over the city. Not even the stars or moon shone in the sky; no fires could cut through the shroud. Just the endless darkness of God’s wrath.

Though they didn’t acknowledge Yehudiah verbally, Sorush turned to face it, fixing it with a stare that literally glowed golden.

“Thanks,” Yehudiah said. “For giving me a break.”

“No problem,” Sorush replied. “This may still kill some things though. It’s supposed to get cold when there’s no sun.”

Yehudiah looked out over the nothingness where the city should be. “It could be warmer. But it’s only for a few days; I don’t think it’ll be that bad.”

It shifted its weight to one leg. “How much longer you think you’re gonna have to torture them?”

“This is a last-ditch effort,” Sorush said. “I can’t think of anything else I can do, outside of killing them all.”

“She wouldn’t like that,” Yehudiah murmured. “They may be heathens, but they’re _people_ , they have _souls_. She may bitch and moan about it, but She does love them, all of them.”

It flashed Sorush an impish grin, hoping they heard it in its voice. “Also I would discorporate you if you killed anything on my day off.”

“I’d just get another body,” they said. “I’m not even particularly attached to this one, really.”

Yehudiah deflated. “You are absolutely no fun.”

They heard it at the same time, then, the bell that rang from above and nowhere and everywhere at once. Yehudiah tilted its head up towards the sky, squinting at the sound.

“You too?” Sorush asked.

“I haven’t been called Upstairs since I got here,” it said, fingers fisting the fabric of its robes. “She must be serious.”

  
  


Yehudiah had forgotten what it felt like, getting teleported. It’d been on Earth for so long, so endlessly busy, that the higher ups had been content to just leave it to its own devices. It knew what it was there to do, and if anyone needed to get in contact, they’d have to go down and do it themselves. Or catch a passing hymnist and take over their vessel for a moment, whichever was easiest.

It felt a bit like when you’re drifting off to sleep, but not quite there yet, and something makes a noise outside and jerks you back to consciousness, like you’ve been violently yanked back into your body before you were ready. It felt weird, and slimy, and unpleasant, and Yehudiah wondered why nobody else complained about this.

It took a second for Yehudiah’s eyes to adjust to the stark whiteness of Heaven from the deep darkness of Egypt, which struck Yehudiah as odd before it realized that the whole kit and caboodle had been beamed up, not just its soul. Did they always do it like this? If so, why did nobody else feel like their atoms had been rearranged slightly to the left?

 _Wonderful_ , it thought, realizing that the robe it was wearing hadn’t been washed in three days and smelled like old blood and sweat. Exactly the condition it wanted to be talking to the Archangels in.

Gabriel was trying and failing not to make a face at the two of them, standing there in his crisp white suit, so starkly different from the Earth-style robes that Sorush and Yehudiah wore.

“Am I done?” Sorush asked, fixing him with that endless stare of theirs. “Did the Pharaoh let them go?”

“Not quite,” Gabriel said, taking a reluctant step forward. “That’s why it’s here too.” He gestured toward Yehudiah.

“It’s my day off,” it said, pointing at the floor, its voice strained. “I’ve been busting my ass down there with all the plagues; Azrael told me to take a break.”

“Well _God_ says to come in on the weekend,” Gabriel snapped. “The Egyptians aren’t wanting to give up their hold on the chosen ones, and She’s tired of playing the game. She’s taking it into Her own hands.”

Yehudiah saw a little of the light fall from Sorush’s face from the corner of its eye. “Oh,” they said, deadpan, but it could swear they sounded sad. 

“You did great, kid, just,” Gabriel sucked air between his teeth. “You didn’t convince the Pharaoh, and it’s time to try a different tactic. You know how it goes.”

“I guess,” Sorush said solemnly.

Yehudiah crossed its arms. “And I have...what? To do with it?”

Gabriel held out his hands triumphantly and smiled coldly. “Everything! Clearly nothing short of killing people is going to convince Egypt to give up its free labour, and She’s giving you the honours of leading them to judgement!”

“She’s...what?”

“Oh, you don’t have to deal with _everyone_ , don’t worry. Just the firstborns. So not _too_ much work.”

Yehudiah tried very hard not to swear. 

Gabriel clapped his hands together dismissively. “Anyway, that’s it. Good tries so far, you two, keep it up.”

Being shot back down was not really much better than going up.

  
  
  
  


Yehudiah shuddered, a weird copper taste lingering in their mouth. You’d think that with all of Heaven’s goodness and technology they’d make this less unpleasant, but maybe nobody else noticed it. Sorush certainly didn’t seem to. But they didn’t seem to notice anything half the time, at least not outwardly.

It’d been down here way too long, clearly. Gone native already, and death as a concept had only existed for a few hundred years at best.

“If it helps,” Sorush said from somewhere to Yehudiah’s left, “I can tell the Jews to give you a sign so you know you don’t have to worry about them.”

“That’d be fantastic,” Yehudiah sighed, wishing it could turn off the part of this vessel that was just so stressed all the time.

“This feels like the flood,” it said as it looked out over the city, the light of the all the souls within it shimmering in its supernatural vision. Knowing that in only a few hours, approximately a quarter of those would be snuffed out by its own hands. “That one was worse, though, I think. You come up with that?”

“Yes.”

“Good work. _Really_ made a difference on the evil in the world.” It couldn’t keep the sarcasm from coating its words.

The souls of Egypt were hurting Yehudiah’s eyes, so it closed them, squeezed them shut. “Who are we to question the will of God.”

  
  
  
  


Yehudiah left Egypt after that night, following the stinking Nile south to the lake Nassur, as far away from the screams of the still-living as it could get, its hands still feeling the souls of the children it stole from their parents and sent off to the hands of demons.

It heard through the grapevine that the Jews did, at least, go free.


	2. 1500 BCE

Apparently God was up to some shit again in Canaan land, and Yehudiah wandered in that direction to see what was happening. It could smell the intention in the air, the threat of mass death. It knew what that smelled like now, after the Flood, after Egypt, and the scent followed it around like a shroud, burned into its nose, its mouth.

The humans were plotting something, it could tell. They were hunched in their little group outside of this walled-up city, planning. Scheming. The angel sat in a tree, watching them. The smell of blood grew stronger as they headed towards the city, brandishing swords and torches and...musical instruments? Whatever got them in the mood, Yehudiah supposed.

It continued to watch intently, as the humans carried their swords and torches and musical instruments around the wall of this city again and again, the greatest concentration of them surrounding - was that God’s box? Sure was, big ol’ chest covered in gold leaf and absolutely overflowing with Her presence. It’d been a long time since Yehudiah had felt it so close, and it allowed itself to bask in it for a moment, eyes closed, face turned toward the light.

She was always there, of course. Just, around. Everywhere. But down here on Earth, such concentrated doses were hard to come by. Yehudiah felt itself melting into its branch, wings drooping along its back, laying out like a cat in the sunlight. Surrounded by the souls of the dead and the dying, you forget what it’s like to be alive, sometimes.

But then the humans stopped their march and started  _ yelling _ .

  
  


\------

  
  
  


The smell of death was overwhelming now, choking Yehudiah as it ushered souls out of the ruins of yet another city, sending them off to the judgement room. Men, women, children. Everyone... _ everyone _ . Slaughtered.

It fished a newborn’s soul from what used to be a crib, now little more than smouldering ash. The thing wasn’t even old enough to see properly, its soul gazing up at Yehudiah with milky eyes. Innocent. One of Heaven’s for sure - all the children were. But it didn’t deserve to die like that. None of them did.

Most of the souls were confused. Scared. None of them knew what happened.  _ I’ve never seen anything like it,  _ a businessman’s soul shuddered.  _ Fire from the sky...did we anger the gods somehow _ ? A woman’s sought out her children, whom Yehudiah led to her. She was relieved at first before she realized what had occurred. Then she started wailing, and Yehudiah had to push them along to the line, trying to block out the sound. The wailing, the wailing was the worst.

It could feel each soul it touched, feel its deeds, its intentions. Nearly every single one of them were simply mortals living their life, trying to make it through the day.

Yehudiah felt its skin crawl. It was just like Egypt. The wealthy and the slavers aside, almost everyone in Egypt had been, for all intents and purposes, innocent. And again in Jericho. And now, in Gomorrah, it was counting the souls of people who had done nothing wrong in the eyes of the morality they’d been raised with.

“Is this all really necessary?” Yehudiah asked the sky, running a finger over the shocked expression of what used to be a woman, grains falling away from her cheek to scatter across the sand. Even one who thought she was spared was damned, turned to salt for the mortal sin of looking over her shoulder as her entire life burned up behind her. Her soul cried the loudest, clinging to the angel’s robes, begging for forgiveness from a being who couldn’t grant that even if it wanted to.

But who are we to question the will of God.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Sorush stood in a hallway of Heaven, frankly not even sure where they were, having simply wandered around the corridors for a while to see where they ended up. They pushed open a door, peering through into what they expected was going to be yet another empty conference room. It  _ was _ a conference room - one of the big ones, with the high windows, and teleportation circles to cut out the time it took for those called to the meeting to arrive at the correct place, likely because every single room in this hallway looked exactly the same, and everyone kept getting lost. However, it was  _ not _ empty.

Standing at one end of the room, near the circles, was Gabriel, hands behind his back, one foot tapping against the floor. He seemed to be waiting for someone to come in through one of the circles. Something about the way he kept looking at his watch made Sorush’s skin crawl. It felt wrong. Something was wrong.

There was a flash of light and the smell of lightning, and from it stepped...oh good God.  _ Dominions _ .

Sorush had not seen a Dominion in many, many years. Not since the Rebellion, where they had rounded up the angels that had been corrupted by Lucifer’s vanity and set them before Sorush’s feet to be judged for their sins. Very rarely were they ever seen in something so mundane as a meeting room, the light from their sword pommels reflecting off of their glittering wings like a disco ball. These days they mostly spent their time lording over the Archangels and Principalities, making sure things ran smoothly on both Heaven and Earth.

This was serious.

Gabriel’s face was drawn as he faced the Dominions, speaking words Sorush couldn’t quite hear. Something accusatory, they guessed. Something damning. The tension in the room was sticking to the roof of Sorush’s mouth and they started to actually feel afraid.

“It’s been a long time since we’ve had to do this,” one of the Dominions said, its voice rippling through the air like shockwaves. “Be fortunate that God is merciful enough to not destroy you entirely.”

And together they shoved an angel from between them into the middle of the room, its hands and wings bound by shining shackles, face obscured by swaths of pale, wavy hair. Beneath its feet, a circle lit up, white at first, then swirling red. The angel lifted its head to stare Gabriel in the face, waves of hatred pouring from its body.

“Anything you’d like to say for yourself?” he asked, returning the gaze.

Sorush didn’t hear the words Yehudiah spoke before the floor opened up beneath its feet and it dropped out of Heaven in a flash of smoke and flaming feathers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> short this week, sorry, but i promise they get longer after this <3


	3. 950 CE

Go on vacation, Michael had told Sorush. Get some air. God’s not too busy being angry right now, so maybe go see the world. Anywhere you want to go.

Sorush didn’t really  _ want  _ to go anywhere, but they picked a random location on the globe anyway, staring down at their hand as they turned into so much mist before being shot down like lightning onto the mountains below. The air was thick and humid here, but cool beneath this massive cedar forest. In the valley below, a huge city sprawled for what felt like miles, nestled between two rivers.

Well, it was something to look at, anyway.

As they grew closer and closer to the city centre, they noticed more and more stares directed their way, children hiding behind the clothes of their mothers. The humans chattered to one another in a language Sorush didn’t understand, tones hushed, concerned. They gave the angel a wide berth as they wandered through town, taking in the scenery. It was truly beautiful here. Well-constructed buildings with curled roofs and brick-red paint lined the streets. In the center of the city were mansions, featuring relatively huge swaths of land covered in bamboo and trees dropping pink blossoms onto the surface of ponds filled to the brim with glittering golden fish.

The people were still staring at them, and they couldn’t quite figure out why.

Sorush wondered if they should be concerned about that, when they sensed something in the crowd. Something sulfurous, something evil.

_ Demon. _

The hair on the back of their neck prickled as they looked around, following the feeling of dread that crept over them. It wasn’t really their job to thwart demons, but maybe they’d get a commendation or something. There clearly was not much work otherwise for an Ophanim these days.

They found it sitting in a small restaurant, savouring a sizeable bowl of venison and rice. It stood out from the humans in the room, its skin pale, its hair a deep wine red. It sensed the angel immediately, looking up, their eyes meeting.

Sorush would never be described as an emotional being, but upon seeing that familiar face with a demon’s aura shook them in a way they could have never expected. Like looking at a ghost. At a nightmare.

Time seemed to stop, just for a moment.

The demon that used to be Yehudiah slowly set down its food and produced a few metal coins from thin air to leave on the mat before standing to its feet and darting out of a side exit.

  
  
  
  


Sorush found the demon in a nearby alleyway, not missing the little jump as it turn around and spotted the angel standing in the way of its only escape route.

“Yehudiah?”

“No, nope, nuh-uh,” Formerly-Yehudiah said, shaking its head. “Not doing this.”

Sorush studied it for a moment. It looked tired, pallid, dark circles underneath its eyes, once a sky blue, now red with slitted, serpentine pupils. Its hair was cut with straight bangs and cheek-length side locks - a style that Sorush recognized from the humans in the street. Other than the colour of its eyes and hair, it could have almost passed as a local.

Formerly-Yehudiah was pacing. “Why are you here? What do you want? Why are you staring at me?”

“I was just in town,” Sorush said, plainly.

“Why, God finally remembered Japan exists? What’s the plan this time, oh smiter of humans, gonna blow up a mountain and bury them under ash like Pompeii?”

“I didn’t do that, that was just-” they started, but the demon cut them off.

“ _ Why are you here? _ ” It hissed, a wisp of smoke curling from between its sharp, gritted teeth.

“I’m on vacation. Michael told me to go and see the world. I haven’t had anything to do in a long time.”

“Of all the places on the planet to go, you just so happened to choose Heian-kyo?”

“Yes? I just picked something at random on the globe and walked until I saw buildings. It seems nice here.” They looked at Formerly-Yehudiah, right in the eyes. “Are you okay?”

The demon blinked. “Excuse me?”

“I saw you Fall.”

Formerly-Yehudiah's face darkened. “You saw that.”

“I don’t think they knew I was there. Are you okay?”

The demon’s hands were shaking. “No, I’m not fucking okay. I got kicked out of Heaven into a big lake of fucking fire for being absolutely fucking exhausted from God killing half the population of the Middle East every other fortnight. Now instead of helping all the souls cross to eternity, Downstairs expects  _ me _ to be the one doing the killing!”

It took Sorush a moment to parse the information. “Oh. You don’t actually like killing people, do you.”

“No, I really don’t.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, ‘oh’. I may have been the shepherd to the dead but I don’t actually like seeing them die.” Formerly-Yehudiah's eyes were focused somewhere beyond the ground. “Especially not all at once. Like  _ that _ .”

“The Flood.”

“And the plagues. And Jericho. And Sodom and Gamorrah. And literally any other point in time where God was so overprotective of Her little group of idiots She called up Her best idea angel to come up with new and exciting ways to kill literally everyone else in the area.”

“Are you...mad at me?” 

Its eyes met Sorush’s, still as dazzling and unnerving as they’d always been. Their blank expression covering up what the demon now suspected was a mountain of understanding that nobody else could see.

“No,” it sighed. “You’re just doing your job, just like everyone else.”

Sorush continued to stare at them. “I haven’t had a job in a while, though. It’s boring.”

“Yeah I’m sure peace _ is _ pretty boring when you were created specifically to make humans’ lives miserable.”

“Isn’t that your job now, too?”

Formerly-Yehudiah blew a raspberry. “Like I said, killing humans sucks. I’ve got a quota of dead things but I mostly just hang out at the docks and throw rocks at fish to fill it. Or go hunting. Fancy butchers pay good for venison that isn’t wounded.”

“You are...disobeying your superiors?”

“It’s not disobeying it’s...bending the rules. Hell is way less of a stickler about that shit, as long as the numbers are on the board.”

“Could you just get another job?”

“No more than you can. When they drug me out of the lava they saw I was a fucking psychopomp and went ‘oh goodie finally someone with some talent!’ and handed me a scythe and said to get at it. Good news is they also don’t ever expect me to go back Downstairs for anything but quarterly staff meetings.”

Formerly-Yehudiah looked up at Sorush. “So. You really just here on vacation?”

“Yes, I haven’t had much to do in a good hundred years or so.”

They were telling the truth, though it realized that it shouldn’t have doubted, them being an angel, and all. The demon took count of them, from the style of their hair to the robes they were wearing. Old robes. Like, really old robes. Really old,  _ Middle Eastern _ style robes, still bearing faded ink spots around the knees. Sorush had not updated their wardrobe since before Jesus was alive, which was absolutely not a surprise at all.

“Well if you’re gonna hang around Japan for a while, you’re not going to make friends looking like that,” Formerly-Yehudiah said. “This is an island, and the locals aren’t very friendly with outsiders. The only reason they tolerate me is because I’m a good hunter, but you...I dunno.”

Sorush looked down at themselves. “What’s wrong with how I look?”

“First off, your hair is silver, which is only slightly more likely to occur naturally than mine is. Second, do you see anyone else wearing that style of robe here? Of course not, it’s all kimonos in Heian-kyo. You stand out like a sore thumb. Also, you have a  _ big fucking sword _ at your side.”

“Is that bad?”

The demon spun on its heels and feigned pulling at its hair. “Is it-  _ Yes, _ it’s bad. You’re liable to get discorporated by a passing samurai carrying that thing around out in the open like that. The least you could do is wear the right clothes. Like what I’m wearing, but white, or whatever angels are into these days.”

Sorush thought for a moment about what they had seen worn on the street, before waving a hand in front of themself and miracling their clothing into a cream hand-woven kimono with red and gold detailing of cranes along the hemline and sleeves. The sword was gone, returned to its extra-dimensional armoury.

Formerly-Yehudiah blinked. “Really?”  
Sorush admired the fabric, rubbing it between their fingers. “You said to imagine something nice.”

“You look like the emperor’s daughter on her wedding day.”

“Maybe they will stop staring if I look like I have money.”

“Your eyes are _ glowing _ .”

“Yours are red. And slitted, now.”

“They just think I’m a yokai! That’s why they never ask me why I don’t put holes in the animals I sell them.”

Sorush tilted their head. “How do you become a yokai?”

Formerly-Yehudiah hemmed and hawed for a moment, waving a hand. “Ehh, they’re more...Hell’s style. Y’know. Mischief and all that. But in a good way, like I give the humans high quality meat and they leave me alone because if they don’t I’ll curse them all to grow hair in weird places, that kind of thing.”

Sorush looked around, studying the atmosphere around them. Scrying. “These people have many gods,” they said after a moment. “Gods of nature. They’ll just think I’m one of those. Maybe of a mountain, something with snow, because of my hair.”

“Wouldn’t that be like...some kind of sin? Posing as a god?”

“ _ A _ god is not  _ the _ God,” Sorush said. “I am not pretending to be Her, just one of the pagan idols the humans like to worship. It’s still kosher.”

The demon grinned, its teeth flashing in the low light. “Keep telling yourself that.”

It pushed up off of the wall then, sighing. “Look, it was nice seeing you around but I’ve got a date with the shogunate I need to get to.”

“Oh,” said Sorush, something that may have been disappointment in their voice.

“Ugh, don’t give me that face,” Formerly-Yehudiah groaned, spinning on its heels to face Sorush again. “Look, stay in town, I’ll come find you when I’m done and we can go get dinner, how’s that sound?”

“I don’t need to-”

“If you’re gonna be a tourist, at least taste some local cuisine, okay? It makes the humans feel more comfortable around you if you eat. Humans fuckin’ love eating.”

“But I don’t-”

“Shut up, I have work to do. See ya in the afternoon, you weirdo.”

And with that, the demon that used to be the shepherd of souls snapped its fingers, its clothes changing to match Sorush’s before it waved goodbye, stepped around a corner, and disappeared.

  
  
  


“So, what are you in the mood for? Venison? Noodles? Oh, wait, hold on there’s this awesome little seafood place near the docks you gotta try, come on.”

Formerly-Yehudiah was back in its plain clothes, hair pulled up with a pick off of its neck, the short strands at its nape sticking to its skin with sweat. The afternoon heat was uncomfortable, even in the shade.

“Yehudiah-” Sorush started, but the demon cut them off.

“That’s not my name anymore,” it said, eyebrows knitting slightly. “Part of getting fired from Heaven is getting a new identity.”

“Oh, okay. What is it now, then?”

The demon stammered. It did not expect to have to make this decision right now, right this second, because of course it had lied.

“It’s...ah...”

“Itza?”

“Yeah, sure,” Itza said, feeling as though it had just made a terrible mistake.

“Itza,” Sorush repeated, rolling the name around their tongue. “I don’t know what seafood is.”

They watched Itza’s face go on a journey. “You don’t...it’s. It’s food. From the sea. Like, fish, seaweed, shellfish, that kinda stuff.”

“Shellfish?”

“They’re...they’re little...slimy things that live in shells and they like. Open sometimes to look at you with a million eyes and they snap like this-” Itza mimicked a scallop clapping with its hands. 

“And humans eat them?”

“They’re  _ delicious _ .”

Sorush wasn’t sure they’d ever experienced delicious before.

The two of them sat at their individual low tables, across from one another as was proper for two patrons of what appeared to be an incredibly high-class establishment, judging from the decor and appearance of the other diners. Sorush found the position of being on their knees mildly uncomfortable, but fortunately they were very good at completely turning off any of their senses if they needed to. Or maybe more accurately, they often forgot to turn them  _ on  _ in the first place. Either way, they seemed to have a stamina that Itza did not possess when it came to sitting. It lasted about five minutes sitting square before shifting around, elbow propped up on one knee.

They were brought a huge variety of different foods - thinly sliced fish and game bird, fermented vegetables, rice, strips of dried seaweed, and spices to smother it all in if they wanted. Itza clapped its hands together and said something in the local language that Sorush didn’t know, then picked up the little wooden sticks in one hand and brought a bowl of stewed meat up to their face.

Sorush just stared down at the plates in front of them.

“What’s wrong?” Itza asked, somehow detecting the hesitation.

“I uh. Don’t know what to do with this,” Sorush confessed.

“You eat it, it’s food. Like this.” It scooped up a bit of meat with the chopsticks and popped it into its mouth, chewing in an overly exaggerated way before swallowing loudly. “Then you wash it down with tea or whatever.”

Sorush lifted their chopsticks in their left hand.

“No, the other hand,” Itza corrected.

“This one feels better.”

“Nobody uses that hand to eat, Sorush. You’re gonna get weird looks.”

“I have gotten weird looks all day.”

Itza scrunched its face up. “Fine. Do what you want, be a crazy bastard if that’s what makes you happy. Just make sure you turn your tongue on so you can actually taste what you’re eating.”

They were grateful for the reminder. Sorush awkwardly pinched a slice of salmon between their chopsticks and placed it into their mouth.

They didn’t register that they had reacted outwardly at all until the sound of Itza’s laughter penetrated the absolute  _ euphoria  _ they were experiencing within their mind.

“What?” They asked, nearly choking on the fish.

“Satan and his demons, I have never seen anyone make that face before,” Itza cackled, leaning against the table. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you make a face at all, actually. It’s fantastic.”

Sorush didn’t quite know what to do with that.

Itza continued to grin up at Sorush, pupils wide. “Good ain’t it? Humans know what the fuck is up when it comes to food. Can’t say I’ve had that religious of an experience with it, though.”

“It’s nice,” Sorush said, selecting a new bowl to try. “I am glad you suggested this.”

“Yeah, yeah, sure.” Itza wasn’t looking at them anymore, turning pointedly back towards their food, hiding behind their bowl. “So what’s your vacation plans? How long are you down here for?”

Sorush decided they were not as much a fan of fermented fish as the grilled variety. “Dunno. I assumed I’d get a call when I was needed.”

Itza mumbled an acknowledgement around a massive bite of pickled daikon. “You should go to Hokkaido before you leave Japan. It’s mostly country up there but it’s gorgeous this time of year. There’s probably still snow on the mountains. I’ve got business here in the capitol until hanami but-”

“Hanami?”

“Yeah it’s this festival where everyone dresses up and looks at the flowers.” It waved a hand towards the door behind them and the sakura trees lining the road beyond it, their branches swollen with blossoms. “It’s a big thing apparently. Very romantic. They make these sweet rice balls and wrap ‘em in cherry leaves and they’re just  _ divine _ .”

Ten minutes ago Sorush may have made a comment on its use of “divine” as anything other than pertaining to God, but as they helped themselves to another slice of salmon, they were willing to let it slide.

Itza was thoroughly soused by the time Sorush finished their meal, both elbows on its table, head in its hands. It had foregone its manners several minutes ago, choosing to sip its sake directly from the tokkuri rather than pour it into the tiny earthenware cups provided.

“You done yet, slowpoke?” It asked, grinning again.

Sorush considered the plates before them. They had, successfully, consumed every ounce of the food they’d decided they liked. “Yes.”

“Fuckin’ finally,” Itza groaned dramatically. “I’m tired of drinkin’ by myself.”

They spent a few moments bickering over which one of them was the oldest, eventually determining that Sorush could remember the Rebellion clearly while Itza was a little more fuzzy on the details, so Itza had to summon up all of its motor control to not spill liquor all over the table as it poured their drinks.

The sake was no longer warm, but still smooth and sweet on Sorush’s tongue. They sipped it like one would sip a glass of water, and before they knew it, the two of them were being thrown out of the restaurant by a worried yet frustrated cook.

Itza shouted in Japanese back at the door of the restaurant where the proprietor was berating his employee for treating yokai so rudely, collapsing into a giggling fit at their expressions.

“What did you tell them?” Sorush asked, concerned. The humans seemed to be very worried.

“I told ‘em they’d get what they deserved,” Itza wheezed. “Look at ‘em fret about it.”

Sorush looked back at the owner, who was bowing low in their direction. “That wasn’t nice.”

“ _ Duh _ , that’s the point, I’m a demon now. Nice isn’t in my job description anymore. Not that it ever was, I don’t think.”

Sorush opened their mouth to reply with something scathing, but Itza grabbed their hand then, using it as leverage to stand to its feet.

“If it makes you feel better, what he deserves is a full net and an increase in patronage.”

Sorush stared at their hand. “What?”

“I mean, he’ll worry about it tonight but he’s gonna end up famous one day as long as he works hard for it.”

“You...blessed him?”

“I wouldn’t call it a blessing. More like...a demonic contract with conditions.”

Sorush was, once again, not sure how to react.

Itza kicked the awkward silence out before it could walk in the door, bumping its shoulder against Sorush’s, nudging them towards the main road. “C’mon angel, the night is young, and I’ve got a whole cask of the real fancy festival shit back at my place.”

“Why do I feel like you aren’t supposed to have that?”

The demon’s sharp teeth glittered in the moonlight. “Listen, I paid for it with legal tender, and if I want to celebrate and share my booze freely with exactly one divine being only, that’s my own blessed prerogative.”

  
  



	4. 1577

Sorush was thankful that breathing was unnecessary for angels, because even with their senses turned off, they could tell that the air was uncomfortably thick with humidity. Moisture clung to their skin simply from standing outdoors, sticking their now somewhat culturally appropriate cream-coloured robes to their body.

The terrain, at least, was breathtaking. Lush rainforests blanketing the mountains, the rise of stone temples peeking out over the trees, the chorus of exotic birds filling the air. Shame about all the fires, though.

They’d been looking forward to seeing Mesoamerica, seeing as Itza had mentioned the area specifically all those years ago. They’d taken their time wandering through sub-Saharan Africa, investigating the subtle yet fascinating wildlife before miracling across the ocean, and now it appeared that everything was in the process of being razed. Both the cities and the forest around it were ablaze, the sounds of war echoing through the trees from the valley below. Somehow, even up here, the acrid smell of smoke was strong in Sorush’s nose.

“Oh I am _ so  _ glad it’s you and not someone else,” came Itza’s voice from a tree above them. It was perched up there like a gargoyle, dressed in black once more, its hair cut short just below the jaw. When Sorush looked up at it, it swung upside-down by its knees, face inches from theirs. “I smelled angel and was afraid someone actually worrisome had come to bother me.”

“Hello, Itza,” Sorush said, hopefully pleasantly.

“Before you ask,” Itza said, pointing at the burning city, “I don’t have anything to do with that. That’s just humans finally figuring out how boats work and being slightly better at killing everything they find than they used to be.”

“So then why are you here?”

It shrugged. “As long as I stay in the general vicinity for a while I can tell head office I was over there doing my job without actually doing my job. Not like there’s anyone around here to verify those claims.”

Itza dropped out of the tree, attempting a catlike flip to its feet but failing to nail the manoeuvre and falling on its ass instead. It recovered gracefully, however, hopping up and dusting its clothes off nonchalantly.

“So what are you doing in this neck of the woods?” it asked, trying to pretend it didn’t just fall out of a tree. “Good job on the outfit, by the way. It at least looks somewhat accurate for the locale. You still have that weird glowy eyeshine thing going on, though.”

“Yes, well, I can only naturalize so much.” Sorush replied, dutifully looking off into the distance and not mentioning the embarrassing event. “I remember you mentioning this area back in Egypt, so I wanted to visit while I was still down here.”

Itza raised an eyebrow. “You remembered that? Huh.”

“It is lovely here, fires aside. Rather humid, though.”

“Yeah, I guess you wouldn’t be that used to it.”

Itza kicked at the forest floor and cleared its throat. “Ah, look, Cortés is gonna be busy here for a while, wanna skip town and grab lunch? Have you had anything spicy yet?”

“Spicy?”

“Like fire. In your mouth. But not actually hot? Just kind of...orange and pink and stuff. Look, it’s weird but good, come on, I don’t like hearing dead people cry about being dead.”

It was then Sorush realized that Itza was nervous. Shifting from foot to foot, eyes never still, flicking from the burning city to the jungle, to Sorush, fidgeting with the hem of its shirt. It was doing that counting thing again, seemingly compulsively, picking at the corner of its thumb with a nail.

They weren’t quite sure how Heaven would feel about them consorting with a demon again, but it’s not like anyone had called in a while.

“Sure, we can go,” Sorush said.

“Cool. Great. I can’t teleport anymore, do you mind? I don’t feel like flying.”

“Not at all,” Sorush said, putting a hand awkwardly on Itza’s arm. “You’ll have to tell me where we’re going, though.”

Now, Sorush had traveled via teleportation miracles countless times on their own, but it had never traveled with another being, much less a demon. They half expected the teardown and mingling of their atoms to feel like being caught on fire, or smell like rotting eggs and smoke, but turns out it was exactly the same as when they did it by themselves, just maybe a bit more tingly.

The same could not be said of the sensation of eating the spice-soaked churrasco meat, which made Sorush’s eyes water involuntarily, and Itza bust out that sharp-toothed cackle again. It called them a weenie and smothered everything in front of it with chili paste, and Sorush could swear the demon breathed fire.

They found it impossible to turn the burning off without removing their ability to taste entirely, so Itza traded them their lamb for a heaping bowl of beans and rice, which was definitely more tolerable.

Itza looked more relaxed here, in the city, away from the fire. It was telling Sorush what they suspected was a very sugar-coated account of what it’d been doing since they last saw one another, (hint: it was a lot of slacking off and decimating the small rodent populations of villages Itza had taken a shine to,) occasionally knocking back a bowl of cauim.

“This stuff tastes like nightmares,” it said, waving the waiter over for a refill. “It’s not even that alcoholic. When are they gonna invent tequila?”  
“Well, considering the Spanish are here, not too much longer,” Sorush said, still working on their dinner.

Itza frowned. “Yeah. Only good thing that comes out of all this Inquisition shit,” it grumbled. “The world’s worst alcohol. Ostensibly.”

The waiter delivered its refill then, which it stared at for a moment before taking a long drink. Sorush smelled smoke and looked around momentarily to find the source before they realized that Itza had performed whatever the demonic equivalent of a miracle was to up the alcohol content.

“That’s better,” Itza said, setting the bowl down. “Distillation really is the best idea we’ve had so far.”

“‘We?’”

“Hell.” It stole the last bit of meat off of Sorush’s plate, chasing it with another drink of cauim, wincing at the taste, which had not necessarily improved. “I mean, humans came up with alcohol on their own, but distillation was a Downstairs invention. Think about it, there’s no other reason than gluttony to make the poison more poisonous through science.”

Sorush reached for another slice of meat but found their plate empty. They set it aside. “Well I guess then it’s good I prefer wine over aqua vitae.”

“That is the most stereotypically angelic thing I’ve ever heard,” Itza laughed. “But I guess it’s the only decent booze you’ll get in Heaven, huh?”

“Well, I haven’t been to Heaven in a long time,” they said. “So I don’t know if they’ve branched out now that there’s more types of beverages available.”

Itza leaned back in its seat. “Really, still? Not even a call?”

Sorush shook their head. “I was told that they would let me know when they needed me again, but so far I guess there’s not been much going on.”

“There’s been quite a lot going on, if you ask me,” Itza said. “I’ve been around a lot of disaster zones lately expecting to smell you there, but it turns out sometimes the humans just drink contaminated water and die all on their own.”

“I am not the only angel who can create plagues, you know. I wasn’t responsible for Sodom and Gomorrah, for example.”

“Sure, but…” Itza made a noise with its throat. “I just expected you to be given  _ some  _ work, I guess. With all the people dying and all.”

Sorush shrugged. “It’s been interesting to travel, anyway. There’s a lot of strange creatures down here.”

“Well I’m glad you’ve been enjoying your vacation.”

“A bit disappointing that Mesoamerica is under siege. I was hoping to see more of the rainforest.”

“I suggest heading south,” Itza said, finishing its drink. “The Amazon is spectacular and probably won’t be on fire for at least a few months. Get lucky and you’ll see some jaguars.”

Sorush nodded. “I’ll do that, thank you.”

The meal was over, the sun was setting, and the conversation felt as though it were petering off. Sorush felt that it was time to take their leave, though they found it difficult to stand from their chair and pay the cook for their time. They covered Itza’s meal as well, to the demon’s mild protest.

The sunset sky was deeper tonight, the smoke from the fires shrouding the world in a slight haze as they stepped outside together, satisfied. Itza was fidgeting with the fringe on its sleeve, its nose curling at the heavy smell of burning trees. “Guess we’re not having a nightcap this time,” it said wryly. “Even if I did have a place to go to tonight, I’ve got a meeting tomorrow Downstairs, and they’ll probably send me back to Europe for some dumb-ass squabble between the Catholics and the Pagans. They seem to have one every other decade.”

“The Catholics?”

“Some of your people, or at least they fancy themselves your people. Honestly I’m not so sure about that, reading some of the things they’re believing these days. Last I checked, Cortés is one of them, burning the forest in the name of God, trying to convert the ‘savage heathens’, or whatever.”

“That doesn’t sound like a good way to bring people to your faith.”

“Yeah, well, maybe you should go talk to the Pope and let him know he’s not being very nice. I’m not going anywhere near that shitshow.”

“I’m sure Heaven’s got someone on it already,” Sorush said. “I’m not the one they usually call to do visitations and that sort of thing.”

“I’m sure they do,” Itza said wryly. “Well, see you around. Enjoy South America while you can.”

It tucked its arms into its sleeves and turned away, walking back towards the city. Sorush watched it go until it turned a corner, disappearing from sight.


	5. 1605

The great black snake looped around the topmost branches of an absolutely massive cedar, soaking up the last few rays of rare winter sun before it slipped behind the mountains, not to rise again for what felt like an eternity. It was in Japan again, somewhere in the Nankai region, enjoying a respite from the snow in Europe. It had decided it liked the mountains, especially ones near the coast. Something comforting in the stability they gave. Miles and miles of rock covered in trees so thick three humans couldn’t hold hands and wrap all the way around them.

The reflection of the sunset reflected off of the wave crests, the clouds heavy in the sky. On the beach, seabirds were wrapping up their routines, soaring through the air and snapping up the last few fish before going wherever it is seabirds go at night to sleep.

Itza unwrapped itself from around the branch and drifted down to the ground lazily, savouring the feeling of stretching its wings, of them catching the air beneath them. The humans were too numerous to let them out too often these days, but this place, at least, didn’t seem to contain too many. And any that did see a huge serpent transform into a winged humanoid wearing a fur-lined coat, well. There’s a new mythological creature for them to wax poetic about.

It kept its wings out, ruffling the feathers as it lighted delicately on a large rock jutting out over the water. It stood there for a while, watching the never-ending push and pull of the tide, the sun sinking behind the mountains and painting the ocean gold.

Basking was really the closest they had to...well. To what it felt like to be an angel. To feel God’s light. You never really forgot what it was like, even after thousands of years, though Itza imagined it wouldn’t feel so great anymore, even if it were able to feel it at all. Turns out cathedrals did weird things to the atoms of demons.

Itza decided, if it ever got to retire, it’d be somewhere like this. The earth, the sky, the ocean. The pale scent of salt and distant rain and conifer trees, not a human soul in sight.

Basking and the silence of sunset at the ocean, the mountains to its back. Those were things worth living for.

A sensation like the air itself was going to erupt spread over Itza, every hair on its body standing on end. The smell of copper and ozone filled its senses, and it instinctively jumped to the side to avoid the lightning strike.

What appeared next to it was not a bolt from the blue, though the sensation of seeing an angel voluntarily pop into existence within its personal space was equally as shocking.

“Fucking _ Christ _ , Sorush. Don’t do that so close to me,” Itza snapped, eyes dilated, chest heaving.

“I’m sorry I startled you,” Sorush said. “I’ve never tried to teleport to a specific person before.”

“Why on Earth would you need to teleport specifically to me?”

“Well, I kept sensing a demon around but couldn’t find you, so I figured it would be easier to just let magic do the work for me.”

Itza made a strange sound with its throat. “Ah, yeah, well. I guess we’ve just been missing each other the whole time.” It wasn’t ready to confess to having followed the angel from country to country, mostly because they were much nicer to talk to than most humans, and certainly its coworkers.

Sorush seemed to accept its paper-thin excuse. “So what are you doing out here? I don’t think there’s been a disaster in Japan for a while.”

“Well I  _ was _ having a nice evening to myself for once, until you decided to come nearly smite me with Godly lightning.” It straightened itself up, ruffling its wings again, adjusting the collar of its coat. “What are  _ you  _ doing back in Japan? You’ve already seen all of this already, too.”

“Yes, but I just really wanted some tuna and this was the last place I remember having it. I was only just in India, so it wasn’t a long trip.”

Itza just shook its head, amused. “So, you hear from Heaven yet? I would imagine the humans have been naughty enough to require the smiting services of Sorush the Ophanim in the last few hundred years or so.”

Sorush sighed. “No, I still haven’t heard from anyone since I was sent down here. Though to be fair, I’ve mostly been looking for insects near waterways and not really spending time near humans or their musical instruments.”

“You ever thought of calling and like, talking to them? Or shit, you’re literally God’s Vengeance, you could probably talk to Her directly if you drew the right circle in the snow.”

Sorush made a nearly imperceptible frown. “I’ve tried calling a few times, but the Archangels just shrug and tell me to enjoy my vacation and they’ll let me know when something comes up. I wish I could Ascend on my own without discorporating myself; I would love to see what they’re so busy with up there.”

“Maybe God’s just saving you for Armageddon,” Itza suggested. “They say that’s gonna be a fair ways off, but you know, gotta make sure your smiting arm is all...primed and ready, or whatever.”

Sorush’s eyes glowed eerily in the rapidly fading light. “Maybe you’re right,” they said softly.

Then, they seemed to perk up. “Oh! I found you something.”

They dug in the pocket of their coat, producing a half-rotted skull, bits of flesh hanging from its jaws. “I found it in the woods somewhere in the Americas.”

Itza stared at the skull for too many heartbeats before taking it, its fingers brushing Sorush’s, a tingling sensation snaking up its arm. Meat and fur fell from the skull in its hand, leaving the bone clean and white.

Sorush shook loose fur and clumps of rot from their pocket. “I’ve been carrying it around for a while, sorry. I’m not sure what killed it, but it had lovely dark gray fur.”

“You brought me a dead wolf,” Itza said, suddenly unable to breathe.

Odd sensation, this one. Like insects bumping around its insides, trying to escape.

Sorush wasn’t looking at Itza’s face. “It seemed like something you’d like.”

Itza’s hands were shaking. Then, they realized, so was _ everything else _ .

The earth’s roar filled Itza’s senses, driving it to its knees, hands scraping for register on the rocks but finding none. In the darkness it reached for the only thing it could, and found Sorush’s seeking fingers, reaching out for it as well. They clung to one another, wings held over their heads as they were buried in fallen branches only to have them washed away by the thrashing waves.

Itza could hear it starting. The howl of souls. It squeezed its eyes shut and tried to push it out.

They didn’t know when it would end, if ever. Time stood still as the planet vented its frustration for as long as it needed, Itza counting, counting, unable to stop. Then finally, achingly, the ground stilled.

It was silent. So silent. Too silent. Itza was soaked, head to toe, even through its thick deerskin and wolf-fur coat, and for the first time the demon was glad for the hellfire that burned at its core, warming its bones.

“That was frightening,” Sorush said, lifting their wing to peer around. “Would love to never experience that again.”

Itza was staring up at the forest, mouth open. “It’s not as bad as it could have been,” it said after a moment. “Most of the humans are safe, anyway.”

“That’s good,” Sorush said. They shivered involuntarily, teeth chattering.

Itza moved close to them then, pressing its shoulder against Sorush’s, sharing some of its innate heat, letting the warmth flow from within it. The angel jumped back, rubbing their arm as though they’d been burned.

“What was that?”

“You’re shivering. Even if you don’t feel it, your vessel will still get frostbite if you don’t pay attention, so I’m trying to warm you up.”

“It hurt.”

Ah. Of course. However companionable Sorush may be, they were of Heaven, and Itza was now of Hell. And never the twain shall meet.

“Sorry. I didn’t think about it.”

“The sentiment is appreciated, anyway.”

“Here,” It took Sorush’s hands, stuffing them inside the front of its coat, near its heart, sharing simply its body heat and nothing more. “Does that hurt?”

Sorush seemed frozen, though not from the cold. “No.”

“Keep them there for a minute ‘til you can feel your fingers again at least.”

Sorush did, standing an awkward arm’s length away with their hands on Itza’s chest, while the demon listened to the forest around them. In the distance, a wolf began to howl, trying to find its family.

Itza slapped its pockets. “The wolf skull! I had it when the earthquake started but now...oh. It’s gone.”

“And so is the ocean,” Sorush said, removing one hand from Itza’s coat and pointing.

The air on Itza’s arms was standing on end, the violin-screech of death rising from where water used to lap the shore but now left only bare sand and rock as far as it could see.

“Angel,” it said, slowly. “We need to go.”

“But the ocean-”

Something was eating the stars in the distance.

“Is coming back,” Itza hissed, grabbing Sorush’s arm and rocketing them both into the sky, moments before the tsunami decimated the coastline.

  
  
  
  


“You sure you didn’t have anything to do with this?” Itza asked, staring down at the muddy water slowly receding back to the ocean from its perch in a heavy, ancient maple.

“No,” Sorush replied. “There are barely any humans here at all, why would I need to punish them?”

“Just seems like something you’d dream up is all.”

The earth had shook two more times, its last snarling breaths before falling silent at last. Itza was counting, scraping at its fingers in rhythm as it stared blankly downward.

“I need to go,” it said.

“Okay.”

“I don’t know where. Just need to get away from here. I can’t listen to this anymore.”

“The silence?”

Itza laughed but Sorush could hear the strain in it, as if it could easily turn to a sob. “Fuck, I envy you.”

“Where do you think you will go?”

“Away from here. Maybe to the mainland. Or hop the ocean again. Somewhere that isn’t screaming.”

“Do you want me to come with you?”

Itza stiffened. “Why in Heaven would you want to do that?”

Sorush shrugged. “I’m not doing anything down here anyway. I’ve just been wandering around. Every time we cross paths we get along, and it’d be nice to have someone to talk to more than once a century or so for a little while.”

They briefly worried the demon would disappear again, its gaze wavering.

“You remember my job is to kill things, right?”

“So is mine.”

“We are not in any way, shape, or form, similar. I’m a demon. You’re an angel. We’re not supposed to hang out together; in fact, you’re supposed to be smiting me on sight.”

“You’re not so different than when you were an angel, you just swear more. And shouldn’t you be trying to kill me, too?”

“I don’t like killing people,” Itza mumbled. “Not that you’re a human, but I also don’t really want to kill you, either.”

“Nor do I wish to smite you.”

They felt its eyes study them in the darkness, and they wondered if it could still see into one’s soul, like it used to.

“How do you feel about Australia,” it said finally. “Never been. I hear it’s neat. Supposedly that’s where God put all the animals that didn’t quite turn out right.”

Sorush’s eyes lit up, literally. “I’ve never been either. It sounds like it would be interesting.”

Itza shoved its hands in its pockets, trying to avoid picking itself to bleeding. “Let’s get moving then, before I go insane.”


	6. 1665

They took the long way to Australia, looping lazily through southeast Asia before finally finding themselves on the world’s largest island. It was scorchingly hot, up there in the bush, but Itza has never seen Sorush so happy. The wildlife here was ridiculous and unique, stuffing their children in pouches and laying eggs while also nursing its young. Brightly coloured parakeets filled the skies, and glittering black and white magpies took out their wrath upon the heads of anything that walked too close to their nests.

All in all, it was a wonderful time. Unfortunately for Itza and its colony of gut-moths.

There were humans here, too, native Aboriginals with their beautiful paintings and delightfully exciting ceremonies and dances. They seemed to regard the two travelers as some kind of deities, which Sorush and Itza appreciated, because it meant they all stayed out of each others’ hair, for the most part. The humans were content to feel blessed by the presence of spirits, and the supernatural pair were content to watch them go about their lives, so relatively simple in comparison to the bustling civilizations to the north.

Unfortunately it meant that the dining situation was disappointing, to say the least. Angels, and subsequently demons, don’t need to eat, but Itza had grown fond of the ritual of it, sitting down at least once a day to relax, to partake in something purely for the pleasure of it. After spoiling itself with fish and rice and beautifully crafted desserts for half a century, it struggled to be satisfied with unsalted grilled kangaroo as its only option.

It groused about this occasionally, usually when the smell of cooking wafted up from a nearby village. Sorush took the complaining in stride, strategically setting up their nighttime hangout spots well away from humans so Itza was less restless. And in return, it would stand with its hands behind its back, watching them ooh and ahh over some strange insect they found under a rock, a bemused smile on its face that it thought Sorush never saw.

It was maybe sixty years since they’d left Nagoya, on a particularly stunning full moon in the middle of the desert, and Itza was lying on a wide rock, staring up at the stars. They were spectacular out here, with nothing to block the view. It had taken to sleeping at night lately, but something about the way the moon was turning everything silver that kept it awake tonight. Like something magical might happen, and if it closed its eyes, it’d miss it.

It hadn’t smelled Sorush in at least an hour, but that wasn’t unusual. Sometimes they’d disappear for half a day, and when Itza finally got bored, it’d find them sitting in a river somewhere trying to determine the sex of various fish. Eventually they’d come back, soaked to the bone and eager to show Itza what it’d learned.

And sure enough, it wasn’t very long before Itza heard footsteps behind it, a cadence it realized suddenly that it genuinely would recognize anywhere now.

“I made dinner,” Sorush said, standing a little awkwardly (for them,) next to Itza’s rock, holding a steaming plate of something that Itza suddenly could smell, when it couldn’t just minutes ago.

It tasted the air. Some kind of fish, rice, vegetables? On an actual ceramic plate? How in the Heaven?

“Where on earth did you get this?” It asked, taking the plate from Sorush and scooting over so they could sit next to it.

“I caught the fish myself, but the rest I had to miracle up,” Sorush said. “Not a lot of rice down here. Or salt.”

“You cooked all this yourself? How come I couldn’t smell it?”

“I wanted it to be a surprise.”

Itza stared at them. “You used a miracle to make this not have a smell. To surprise me.”

“I know how much you like eating.”

There was a little spark, like an ember flying from a fire and landing on Sorush’s breastbone, warming them from the inside out. Curious.

“Thanks,” it said, scooping a handful of somehow perfectly-cooked rice into its mouth.

They ate their meal and gazed at the stars, and Sorush miracled away the plates when they were done, leaving them in the relative silence of the desert night, just the two of them, with full bellies and the moths that wouldn’t stop beating a rhythm against Itza’s ribcage.

  
  
  
  


“Come  _ on _ angel, it’s hot as Satan’s armpit out here,” Itza whined, pressing against the trunk of a scraggly tree, trying vainly to stay within its meagre shadow. “And I know what that’s like, actually.”

“Five more minutes,” Sorush whined, slapping at the sand in an attempt to capture some kind of small, brown lizard. “I just...wanna see if this is the same species as the big one we found earlier.”

Itza groaned, loudly. “It smells exactly the same to me, why don’t you trust me?”

“Trusting demons’ sense of smell is  _ not  _ applying the scientific method!”

“The scientific method isn’t even a _thing_ yet! My heightened serpentine senses are the best you’ve got and yet you doubt me!”  
Sorush caught the lizard, which promptly bit them, its throat turning black. After a few moments of study, they released it, watching it scrabble away beneath a rock.

“You were right,” they said, dusting sand off of their hands as they walked up to where Itza was struggling to stay corporated. “It was the same species as the big one.”

“Told you. Can we go?”

“Yes.”

Itza peeled itself away from the tree trunk, peering into the distance at the miles and miles of desert around them. “Do you mind if we don’t walk?”

Sorush wiped sweat from their brow with the sleeve of their shirt. “Absolutely not.”

They popped back into existence on the banks of a little oasis, which Itza immediately stripped and threw itself into, sinking down into the water as far as it could without drowning, long hair spreading out behind it like blood beneath the surface.

And of course Sorush immediately saw some kind of weird bug and took off after it.

“We should go to Madagascar next, if you’re so into weird animals,” Itza called out after them.

Sorush turned, giving Itza the faintest hint of a smile, and the fluttering started in Itza’s chest again.

It cleared its throat, trying to push the feeling down. “It’s another island. Not too many people. Bit less desert, bit more tropical.”

Sorush learned immediately that the insect they’d been chasing was one of the stinging varieties, its venom eliciting a sharp swear and a hand motion that promptly flung the thing into the water.

Itza drifted over to the insect and scooped it up. It died upon contact with the demon’s skin, legs curling in on themselves.

“Here,” Itza said, handing it back to Sorush. “Don’t go poking yourself again.”

Sorush had, at some point, acquired a little book that they kept in their pocket along with a little ink pot. Their quills never lasted very long with such use, but they seemed to relish in the prospect of plucking a feather from some new bird with which to write their notes and sketch details of the creatures they’d been finding. They’d had to miracle away bad drawings and inkblots (and on one occasion, wine, which had been Itza’s fault,) but they had long since stopped caring about the amount of frivolous miracle tickets that no doubt wound up on Gabriel’s desk. In any case, one could argue that cataloguing the world’s fauna was anything but frivolous.

And so Sorush sketched the dead wasp, while Itza thermoregulated in the pond. Nothing to hear but the scratching of a quill on paper and the scream of cockatoos in the trees. At least it’d better be cockatoos screaming.

Itza didn’t notice it was counting until the scrape of its nail on skin started to burn.

“Something’s wrong,” it said, popping up out of the water, tasting the air.

Sorush looked up from their book. “What?”

“Nothing here. Not enough people here.”

“Somewhere else, then?”

“The only time I’ve been able to sense this much death from afar is…”

“Catastrophe,” Sorush said, and they suddenly felt afraid.

  
  
  
  


It wasn’t difficult to find the source. The second they disembarked onto the mainland the smell of death was overwhelming, and all they had to do was follow Itza’s nose to England. The stench of it, the sickly-sweet smell of weeping ulcers, the acrid smoke of the fires they were burning the hundreds upon hundreds of dead in mass graves. Blood and rot lined the streets. The city was rife with it.

Itza’s eyes were dilated, counting audibly now, whispering the numbers that kept climbing higher and higher.

And Sorush just stared down at the street as death was dealt to the city, but not by their hand.

“This can’t be natural, there’s too many to be natural. Are you sure this isn’t you?” Itza asked.

“No,” Sorush replied, their chest tight with an emotion they couldn’t quite place.

“But you...you handle the plagues…”

“Not this one. No one called me in for this one.”

“Then who?”

It was a tragedy. Not just the sheer amount of human suffering, but the fact that Sorush couldn’t detect a single spark of supernatural influence. Not angelic, not demonic. For all of human history, they themselves had been the catalyst to nearly every unnatural plague the earth had seen, but now they were standing in an alleyway watching people drop in the streets, and they had nothing whatsoever to do with it.

Sorush was not a particularly complicated being. They were created for a purpose, they were good at this purpose, and they liked being useful. They weren’t very good at expressing themselves the way humans did, so nuanced in their mannerisms. Not that they didn’t feel emotions - far from it. Just usually just one at a time, and they rarely reached their face. This had always been perfectly fine. Humans, despite all of their fascinating behaviours, were the creatures Sorush was created to deal with, and usually “deal with” meant “kill”, so it never made sense to try very hard to appeal to them. They were just here to do God’s will and nothing more.

Or at least, that’s what they _ used _ to be here for. Now they weren’t so sure.

Sorush caught Itza by the elbow as its legs gave out from under it, its entire body shaking. Its hands were bleeding where its nails had scraped deep enough but it couldn’t stop, eyes staring through the ground, pupils blown so wide it was almost impossible to see the colour within them.

“There’s too many,” it whispered, “I can’t keep up...”

Sorush hadn’t had time to process the emotion they already felt, when another wrapped its claws around their heart and sunk them in.

Empathy wasn’t something Sorush was programmed with. They were an Ophanim, an angel of the Second Sphere, unconcerned with the affairs of humans, or even other angels, and those kinds of emotions weren’t necessary to fulfill their God-given mission. Yet here they were, with a panicking demon clinging to them, and they wanted nothing more than to clap their hands over its ears and quiet the voices in its head. To perform some kind of miracle to free it from the pain of so much death around it. But Sorush wasn’t that kind of angel. They didn’t fix things, they broke them.

So they dragged Itza back into the alley and stood over it while it bled into the dust until Azrael showed up personally and pulled it to its feet.

Death turned its empty, voidlike face toward Sorush, skeletal fingers digging into Itza’s shoulder. “You should leave,” it said, its voice like ice in Sorush’s veins. “This is no place for angels like you.”

“Where am I supposed to go?” Sorush asked, but Death had already disappeared and taken Itza with it.

The angel stood in the alley alone, feeling angry and scared while London died around them and they didn’t even know why. It must be a punishment, but for what? From whom? 

They scratched a circle in the dust with a finger, whispering the incantation that changed it from simply drawings to a communication device, the lines lighting up beneath their hands. They gave their name, their rank, presenting their question to God Herself, but the circle just pulsed at their feet, a holy dial tone tone that rang louder than any phone’s ever would. They tried again, calling up for someone to tell them what was happening, but not even the Metatron’s voice came through the circle.

“Are You still up there?” they asked, looking up into the cold, gray clouds. “Are You still listening?”

For the first time in their life, Sorush felt their eyes burn with tears. “Where am I supposed to go?” they cried, but nobody replied.

  
  
  


\---

  
  
  


Itza came back to that London alleyway to find it empty, the traces of Sorush weak and faded, the magic circle kicked over and scuffed out, covered now by the footprints of passing humans. It followed the cold trail as far as the end of the alley where it disappeared into thin air, the last lingering particles of divinity washed away with the rain.

Maybe they got called Upstairs again, sent off on a job, God finally awakened from Her slumber to dole out punishment upon the mortals once more, just like the good old days. It followed the smell of death from war to war, famine to famine, but it never found the angel there, just humans dying en masse beneath an uncaring sky.


	7. 1832

The eighteenth century came and went, Itza never staying in one place too long, lurking wherever wars popped up, staying just close and long enough that it could lie and say it was doing its job while filling its quota with animals instead of people. Every time it hoped that this was Heaven taking action, and every time it turned out to be the work of humanity doing what it does best.

The world was relatively peaceful for a while (well, unless you were a native American, quite a few of whom Itza was forced to deal with, unfortunately,) until right around the end of the century, when the English, in a fairly classically English manoeuvre, triggered a particularly bloody war with the colonies, who promptly threw the English out and declared themselves independent.  _ Good for them _ , Itza had thought, wryly, dragging its stupid scythe through the battlefieds and bonking anyone who wasn’t quite dead yet.

It decided to move back to Europe after that, hang out in Germany for a while, maybe Poland, or France, eat some actually decent fucking food. That went swimmingly until someone invented a big head-cutting machine and decided to start using it on the entire aristo class (which Itza didn’t necessarily  _ disagree _ with, per se, but it still didn’t appreciate being forced to work so hard.)

The nineteenth century came in fast in Europe, the humans continuing their never-ending quest to control every inch of land they could, and Itza following behind them, watching them commit atrocities against one another in the name of a God that hadn’t spoken in thousands of years.

It was somewhere around 1798, after skulking around the Irish Rebellion (The Americans, Itza decided, were very smart to make that law about the separation of Church and State,) that it decided that Death and Hell could go fuck themselves, and took an unapproved vacation. It’d been working for a century straight, for Satan’s sake; it deserved this.

If you asked Itza if it decided to linger in London because that was the last place it had seen Sorush, and thus it stood to reason that they might return there, it would have hissed and called you a rude name. But at night, when it couldn’t sleep, alone in its room with the candles blown out, it found it harder to deny that it chose the flat it was living in over a nicer one in a more upscale part of town because it was only a few blocks from the alley in which it’d last seen the closest thing to a friend it’d ever had.

But then they never showed up. For years and years and years.

It made sense, though. Sorush was an angel, Itza was a demon. No matter how nice it was wandering all over Australia was, how thoughtful the dinner in the desert was, or the way Sorush seemed to genuinely enjoy its company, they were still hereditary enemies, and they probably had just been waiting for an excuse to leave that wasn’t rude. Or they’d been called back Upstairs to work, or worse, to be punished for consorting with a demon.

It tried to believe this for a while, that Sorush was just being detained, and they didn’t leave because they thought that being with Itza was only one step up from being cast into the lake of sulfur. But you can only pine away for a long-lost companion for so many decades before you start to think that maybe it was _ your _ fault you were alone.

About the time the police showed up on Itza’s doorstep because it hadn’t been seen in over a week, it was decided that it was time to move on. Find out who Itza was when there was no angel to trail behind.

It had never stayed in one place so long, and realized that it had no real hobbies outside of killing animals and drinking. It also turned out that letting one’s hair grow long and living within a vessel with somewhat wide hips made humans think you were a woman, and thus not allowed to come anywhere near liquor or even go out by itself at night. It marinated in its misery for a while, frustrated with the odd shifts in gender expression and roles that seemed to roll around every couple of decades, before deciding to just chop all of its hair off and learn to walk with a swagger.

Somehow, it really, really was not sure, it found itself on the back of a horse, wearing a red riding coat and jodhpurs, racing alongside a pack of hounds baying a fox through the countryside. Maybe it was when it just so happened to have ended up on the list for a particularly fancy party (it had been a Friday, Itza was bored, and had just bought a very nice waistcoat it was keen to show off,) or perhaps the night it got outrageously drunk and impressed a group of posh lads in a barfight. It couldn’t remember. It just knew that it was pretty good at riding, and the other hunters loved its talent for getting the foxes relatively unscathed. So much so that it started getting invited to other hunting expeditions to bring home pheasant, or sometimes off to the woods in winter to collect furs to sell to clothiers.

It was, if nothing else, a way to stay entertained. Itza liked the dogs, and the horses well enough, and the humans were fun in their own backwards kind of way. It had previously never really bothered to interact with them outside of whatever was necessary for work or buying food and drink, but it turns out they were wickedly entertaining, especially those in the country club. Those particular humans were so petty and frivolous; so much wealth to spread around and they chose to spend it on absolutely pointless things.

This worked out well for Itza. Turns out humans pay extraordinarily well for furs, not that it needed to make money, being as it could just create some for whatever it needed, but having a mortal job made it feel like it was blending in better. Which, it realized, was now something it cared about doing. Where it’d previously not really bothered about what the humans thought of its serpentine eyes or unplaceable way of speaking, Itza began wearing dark-lensed glasses, adopted a posh London accent, and found that suddenly the humans were much less likely to avoid it on the street.

It was hard, though, Itza found, to make proper friends with mortals. They had this inconvenient habit of growing old and dying, which put a damper on things like “feeling like putting forth the effort into the relationship just knowing that before you know it this person you care for is gone and you’ll never see them again after you cart their soul off to one place or another.” It was also difficult to find humans with even an iota of understanding of what it was like to be a thousands of years old occult being with supernatural abilities. The closest it got was the feeling of gazing deeply into the eyes of its dapple gray hunter horse, but that was just because a horse’s soul was most similar to standing in purgatory and looking down the chasm of Hell’s rings into the abyss.

And so it spent most of its spare time alone, sitting in its fancy little flat in London, surrounded by the stuffed and preserved bodies of animals it’d killed, watching the world go round.

At least that’s what it _ normally  _ did. Tonight, it was done up in its best suit, sipping some really nice wine and rubbing shoulders with a bunch of scientific types at the Royal Society. Itza didn’t typically hang out with the intellectuals - not that it was stupid, it just wan’t always up for arguing semantics with humans - but its little hobby of killing animals and making leather out of their skins proved to be of interest to the Society and its museums. Itza decided to get in its good deed for the millennia and donate some extra hides and mounts it had lying around, and thus got an invitation to this  _ very  _ nice party.

It was on its third glass of wine, wandering through groups of humans, inspecting all the things on display - exotic bird and animal skins, historical artifacts, books, bits of dinosaur bone - listening in but not too intently to the conversations around it. Philosophers discussing this guy Darwin’s new theories, a drunken archaeologist ranting about Marsh and Cope’s rivalry and how ridiculous it all was, despite their contributions to science. It frowned into its nearly-empty wine glass to remind it that it needed to last until Itza got back around to the drink table, and wove around a collection of entomologists huddled around a display case of impressively-sized beetles, definitely tuning into the conversation they were having. Nobody partied like crazy bug people.

“I’m just not sure that Dictyoptera should include both cockroaches and mantids,” said one young guy, barely out of college if he was at all, arms crossed over his chest. “The structure of the wings is not similar enough to outweigh the other, more obvious differences between species.”

“It’s the same deal as hyaenas being feliforms,” said his colleague, rolling his eyes and taking a long drink from his glass. “They’re just similar enough to be in the same family, that’s all. Just because they look like dogs does not mean they are dogs.”

“But isn’t that how we’ve classified other species? If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, isn’t it then a bloody duck?”

“Hyaena don’t quack - er, bark, either, you know. That’s not a fair comparison.”

“Is it not? Then why are hares rodents when they have vestigial incisors?”

Itza smiled into its wine (which had so far obeyed, and was not getting any lower); taxonomy always got the blood pumping. Humans argue over the silliest things, but that’s what made them fun.

“That’s not at  _ all  _ similar either! The only difference between a hare and a rat is the incisors, but the difference between a cockroach and a mantis is extraordinary!”

“So you see what I mean then!”

“Of course! Wait, no, I-” The second human stammered. “Look, when Dr. Rush comes back you can ask him.”

They seemed to agree, then, that this was the best course of action. Itza was about to move on towards some other titillating commentary, when Dr. Rush himself miraculously appeared from the crowd to cast his judgement upon his underlings.

  
  


\---

  
  
  


Sorush hadn’t really known where they wanted to go when they’d snapped their fingers and disappeared from that London back alley. All they had in their mind was that they wanted somewhere nice and quiet to cool off for a little while. They tried to appreciate the sense of humour their magic seemed to be having when they opened their eyes in the middle of a Greenlandic glacier, but was unable to for at least twenty more years.

They stood there in the snow, shivering despite themselves in their lightweight shirt and trousers, perfect for the heat of Australian summer, but not so much for the middle of the Arctic winter. They remembered Itza’s voice telling them that their vessel would freeze even if they couldn’t feel it, and rather than sacrifice clothing they were comfortable in, they instead miracled themselves an entire house in which to sit and warm their hands by the fireplace.

If you were to stand in it, you would not be surprised when told that Sorush had created it from their own imagination. They were not an angel that had need of knick-knacks or frivolous decorations, and so their house was devoid of decoration or furniture save for the fireplace, a couch, and a coat rack. The walls were painted white, the floors a simple hardwood. It was a good year or so before they realized they might want to add a kitchenette, should someone stop by. Two months later, they miracled in a kettle and a tin of fancy black tea. Just in case.

They made a better communication circle, drawn in chalk in the centre of the living room floor, complete with properly-sized candles. Maybe this time they’d get an answer.

They didn’t.

Calling on God only got them the Metatron, who didn’t give them any answers at all besides the ever-repeated “We’ll call you when we need you,” which did not sit well with Sorush at all. They tried again, hoping that perhaps a more specific request would get them the proper authority, but nope, just Metatron again, who was slightly less polite to them this time for bothering it while it was trying to get work done.

“Fine,” Sorush grumbled, snuffing out the candles and relighting them - the celestial equivalent of putting the phone onto the receiver and picking it back up. “I’ll call someone who’ll actually talk to me.”

“Oh,” said Gabriel, not even looking into the light. “It’s you. I thought you were on vacation?”  
“Yes, I have been on vacation for quite a long time,” Sorush said. “I thought I might give you a ring and see if perhaps you forgot I was down here, and let you know that I’m definitely available for any work that needs to be done.”

“Yeah, no, no, we didn’t forget about you,” Gabriel said, sounding distracted.

“Are you sure? Because I was just in London, and-”

“Oh, was that you? Good job, I suppose, but you know it was completely unnecessary, right?”

“No, I didn’t have anything to do with London, but that’s why I’m calling, I was wondering-”

Gabriel continued to speak over Sorush, completely ignoring them. “The English haven’t done anything really worth smiting them over, unless you consider absolute disregard for basic hygiene a sin. Look, I’m really sorry you’re bored on Earth or whatever, but try to enjoy it, okay? Armageddon will be here before you know it.”

“But-”

But Gabriel had hung up, the pillar of light fading from the centre of the circle. Angrily, Sorush kicked over one of the candles, breaking the circuit and plunging them into relative darkness. Defeated, they put out the rest by hand, gathering them up and setting them onto the mantle before plopping down in front of the fire and dropping their head into their hands.

They didn’t _ want _ to wait for Armageddon. They  _ wanted  _ to go home. Heaven was cold and devoid of creature comforts, but at least Sorush’s coworkers would occasionally remember they existed, and they would feel like their existence had meaning. But there was no way to go back, not unless they wanted to deal with the paperwork involved in killing their vessel. And they weren’t that desperate. Yet.

It was all too easy to fall into despair, not moving from their spot in front of their magical never-dying fire for a long, long time. God had fucked off to who-knows-where, and the angel that was created to put the fear of Her into the ranks and cast down the Fallen was reduced to a field agent constantly on call, but never actually given anything to do.

Winter was dark and lonely this far north, but spring came beautifully, bright green grasses and cheerfully-coloured flowers poking their heads up through the snow that had built up along the side of the little one-room house. The sun actually began to rise again, staying out a little longer every day, the rays of light finding their way through the windows, dragging Sorush’s attention outward once more. The advent of sunlight and green things had brought a return of the animals, and Sorush, despite their feelings on the reason they were here in the first place, had always liked wandering around and looking at God’s creatures. Particularly the little ones that flew around and crunched when you squeezed them too hard. 

And so they decided that maybe it was time to stop drowning in their miseries and leave the little house on the glacier.

It took them a while to find the humans that populated the island they’d found themselves on, which apparently was not as small as they’d originally thought it’d been. They stumbled into the little town in the clothes they’d been wearing since they left London during the plague, and needless to say, the villagers were more than a little baffled by the ordeal. How on earth had this person survived out there in the snow in nothing but leggings and a light overcoat? Nothing short of a miracle, clearly.

It was here that Sorush met the group of researchers, sitting in their tent covered head to toe in fur and down, excitedly talking about flora and fauna, in _ English _ , no less, faces flushed red with wine.

A sudden acquisition of a particularly rare vintage here, a good word there, and a quick boat ride back to the mainland, and Sorush found themself on the founders list of the Royal Entomological Society, a fully fledged Doctor of Entomology (Heaven didn’t seem to care that they used a few miracles to make that a reality so they wouldn’t have to lie,) and apparently a well-respected one too. It was fun, finding bugs and naming them. It wasn’t an impressive job to most people, but to the ones who did appreciate it, Sorush was basically the coolest person on the planet.

That was nice.

What was even nicer was that apparently, despite humans’ distaste for everything that was not exactly how they expected it, nobody questioned Sorush’s inability to assimilate. Scientists, they learned, were all a bit strange, and even someone as stiff and blank-faced as Sorush could find some sort of camaraderie amongst them, even if it was superficial at best, what with their tiny little lifespans. They were all there for the same reason, after all: they all were  _ way _ too into bugs.

It was a respectable life. They traveled too much to own property and that was fine with them. All they needed was a suitcase containing their few (nice, if a little outdated,) outfits, and their exploration gear (which consisted only of some shoes better suited to hiking, and maybe a coat. So the humans didn’t get concerned about them again.) They stayed busy, and they almost...almost forgot that they’d had to find their own purpose for existing.

Sorush had decided somewhere around 1777 that they weren’t terribly social. While they got on well with the science community, which they’d found themselves wholly engrossed by, everyday humans were exhausting. They preferred to stay in whatever lodging they’d chosen for the day (if any at all, though sitting on a park bench all night also seemed to be frowned upon these days,) and read, rather than going out for dinner and drinks.

That is, unless said dinner and drinks were hosted by the science community itself. Then Sorush would don their fanciest waistcoat and show their face to the world. Well, at least to the members and patrons of the Royal Society, which were really the only humans that Sorush halfway cared about.

They had been having a good time, standing in a group of fellow entomologists as they oohed and ahhed over some of the insects on display, drinking wine like it was going out of style. The necessity of having to break away and move through the crowd to refill their glass kept them from zoning out too hard, which they’d also learned freaked the humans out.

They’d ducked out of a conversation about cockroaches to acquire glass number three (or four? They forgot, it’s not like wine affected them if they didn’t want it to,) and returned to find their little underlings arguing taxonomy.  _ Again _ .

“If you have qualms with the way that mantids and rabbits are classified, perhaps you could suggest new taxa for them instead,” they said flatly. “It would certainly help you with your doctorates.”

“It’s nearly impossible to get the community to accept new classifications to species that have already been classified,” whined the student arguing in favour of rabbits not being rodents. “Much easier to just discover new ones and classify them as you like.”

“Then it would be even more impressive should you succeed,” Sorush said, sipping their wine.

They winced at the aroma of it, the liquid not quite making it to their mouth. Had it been this sulfurous smelling a minute ago? Had the caterers given them a different brand this time, despite them requesting the same thing they had been drinking?

They turned to make their way back to the drink table when, out of the corner of their eyes, they saw someone they never expected to see again, staring at them from behind dark-lensed glasses and absolutely  _ exuding _ hellish energy.

  
  
  
  


Sorush’s eyes met Itza’s, a spark of excitement shooting through their chest. They started moving towards it, the barest hint of a smile spreading across their face, but Itza was staring at them like it had seen a ghost. Its eyes were hidden, but Sorush could feel the panic radiating off of it, hands gripping its glass far too tight. It backed away from Sorush’s approach, head turning towards a side door, then back to Sorush, before disappearing into the crowd.

Sorush decided that teleporting in front of its colleagues would be a bit fishy, so they followed the demon on foot, pushing the side door open cautiously, craning their neck to peer down the hallway.

“Okay chuckaboo, time to talk,” Itza growled from their blind side, catching Sorush by the lapel. It spun the angel around on their feet and backed them into a wall, holding them in place with a surprising strength.

“Hello Itza,” Sorush said, as if this weren’t the first thing they’d said to it in almost two hundred years.  “Fancy meeting you here.”

“Don’t give me that shit,” Itza hissed. “You don’t get to fuck off for this long and come back with just ‘fancy meeting you here.’”

At the other end of the hall, a waiter walked by pushing a serving cart, speeding up when he spotted the encounter.

“I was busy-” Sorush started, but Itza cut them off.

“With  _ what _ ? Fucking off and leaving me to clean up the Great Plague and the last century’s worth of wars by myself? Making me think you’d gone back Upstairs and I’d never see you again? Or that you’d decided being friends with me was endangering or a sin or whatever other thousands of reasons I could dream up for you to forfeit our relationship?”

“I didn’t leave because I thought our friendship was a sin-”

Itza’s voice cracked. “Then  _ what? _ I didn’t know where you were, what happened to you! We were together for  _ sixty years _ , Sorush, then you just left me all alone!”

“Isn’t that what we’ve always done, though?”

The realization hit Itza like a stagecoach then, rocking it back on its heels. Of course. Of course they didn’t. Why would they? It’s what they’d always done - they’d meet up, they’d get dinner, they’d go their separate ways. Their last “dinner” might have lasted nearly a century, but it was just dinner.

It let go of them, hands lingering on their jacket a second too long.

“We always went our separate ways, and met back up later,” they said, quietly.

“Yeah. Yeah we did, you’re right.”

The server came back from the kitchen, pushing a now fully loaded cart across the hall. He peered towards the two figures who were now standing apart, looking awkward yet somewhat relieved and made a scandalous face, but Itza snapped its fingers and made him forget what he thought he’d seen.

Itza decided then to direct t heir conversation elsewhere rather than confront the emotion itching at the back of its throat. It nudged Sorush with its elbow, leading them through the heavy side door, back into the main ballroom. “So, what  _ have _ you been doing all this time, besides getting a doctorate, apparently.”

“Mostly getting a doctorate,” Sorush replied. “Lots of traveling and standing in rivers.”

“So basically exactly like we’d been doing since the 1500s, just without me.”

“Basically. You have much better taste in food than most field researchers though.”

Itza made a face. “I don’t hang around with smart people too much but from my limited knowledge, I know what you mean. For a country whose spent most of history taking over everyone else for spices, they keep forgetting to  _ actually  _ use them.”

“If you do not hang out with scientists, why exactly are you here?” Sorush asked, pleasantly surprised to find their wine glass back in their hand. There was still a weird smell to the air, but now that they knew it was just Itza, it wasn’t quite so unpleasant.

“Turns out museums really love when you give them a bunch of spare tanned skins you had lying around your flat,” Itza said casually. “While you were out getting sweaty looking at bugs, I was becoming a master hunter and getting rich enough to be invited to the Royal Society’s parties.”

“I just thought you knew I was here somehow and came to say hello like you usually do.”

“Clearly not,” Itza said, casually liberating a passing human from his (freshly refilled) glass. “I had no idea. Not even a general sense of holiness, not until you crashed the taxonomy nerd party, anyway.”

“I didn’t sense you immediately, either,” Sorush mused. “Maybe I got too used to the smell of demon.”

Itza decided not to push that line of thinking.

“I heard your students call you Dr. Rush. Subtle.”

“I only had a few seconds to think of something, and then it was too late to go back after I became important,” Sorush grumbled. “I’m sure you picked a much nicer name to go with your nice new accent. You were always better at fitting in than I was.”

“I’ve been going by Alistair lately and I quite like it. Everyone seems to think I’m Irish though, don't know what that's about. Only time I ever went to Ireland I broke out in hives for a week; never went back.”

Sorush considered the name Alistair. “It’s got a nice ring to it, good choice. Much nicer, I think, than Samuel.”

Itza snorted. “Samuel Rush…If you were trying to hide your being an actual _ literal  _ supernatural entity from your coworkers, you’re doing a piss-poor job of it.”

“I went with what I know,” Sorush grumbled.

“And what you know is angels who are so polarizing that even Heaven doesn’t know what to do with them?”

“Well, I  _ have _ been wandering around Earth waiting for someone to give me something to do for the last few thousand years.” Sorush sipped their wine. “And you were once an angel of death.”

“I was a psychopomp,” Itza corrected. “Not quite the same. One kills things, one leads their souls to the afterlife.”

“Close enough,” Sorush said. “You kill things  _ now _ .”

“ _ Begrudgingly _ .”

Sorush gave them a miniscule smile. “It’s good enough for mythology.”

  
  
  


Itza was in the middle of a riotous conversation with a large mammal researcher about the intricacies of taxidermy when Sorush appeared at its elbow and announced that they were tired of crowds and asked if it would like to leave. It was caught off guard by the request, partially because Sorush was not usually the one to propose they spend time together, and mostly because, despite their pleasant camaraderie over the night, it didn’t expect Sorush to be interested in spending more time with it outside of the Royal Society. Its throat produced a wonderful array of bizarre noises before eventually agreeing to leave. The same waiter that Itza had mind-wiped earlier giving them a warm smile on their way out of the building.

“It started getting too loud,” Sorush explained, as they walked side by side through the dark, quiet streets. “It’s happening a lot lately. Lots more humans around these days.”

“I know what you mean. Especially now with the Industrial Revolution and all, they’re living a lot longer and making a lot more babies than they used to,” Itza mused. “This city in particular has way too many of ‘em hanging around in my opinion.”

“And yet you live here.”

Itza coughed and adjusted its jacket. “Just because I think it’s too crowded doesn’t mean I hate it. I _ could _ live in a mansion on some rolling down and keep my horse in my own stable, but I already get bored and lonely living downtown, I’d rather not experience the same feelings a twenty minute carriage ride from the nearest pub.”

“You have a horse?”

“I’m a hunter! I’m in a country club! It only made sense to buy my own horse instead of borrowing one from the stablemaster every time.” It huffed for a moment. “She’s a warmblood. Dapple gray. Little downhill and too long in the neck but she’s a wonderful jumper and hasn’t thrown me yet, so I’m not sure what more I could ask for.”

Sorush was smiling ever so slightly. “I can’t seem to imagine you in a country club. You never came off as that type to me before.”

“Times change, angel. Sometimes you decide to go on unapproved sabbatical and end up bored outta your mind, so you learn how to ride horses and pretend to be a rich human for a while.”

“And sometimes you don’t know what to do with yourself so you fake a doctorate and become an entomologist.”

The air was cool and for once it wasn’t raining, a few stars peeking out from behind the sporadic clouds. A perfect night for a stroll. The pair wandered wherever their feet took them, through cobbled streets and back alleys, too engrossed in their conversation to think about the fact that it was the middle of the night and any proper human would at least be in their home, if not asleep.

Itza didn’t realize it’d been leading Sorush back to its flat on the most roundabout route possible until they were standing on its doorstep and the keys were in its hand.

Sorush looked up at the building, modern and newly reconstructed, with what may have been awe. “You weren’t lying when you said you were rich now.”

Itza wanted to ask why they thought it would lie to them, but what came out was an apology for bringing them home on accident. “I’m not trying to be forward,” it said nervously. “I just kinda went on automatic.”

“Forward?”

Of course. “Like I said, times change. The humans seem under the impression that two beings that appear male aren’t allowed to go home together anymore, and they’re pretty hellbent on upholding this new rule. So forgive me if I’m hesitant to invite you in.”

“Are you worried your country club will throw you out?”

Itza’s face was hard. “I’m worried the government is going to  _ kill me _ , Sorush. Or you, now. I’ve seen what they do to men who even _ look  _ like they may be enjoying the company of each other too much. I’m not interested in having to deal with the tongue-lashing and paperwork I’d get from Be-elzebub should the king decide to lynch me.”

“But we  _ aren’t _ men, we’re an angel and a demon, this should not apply to us.”

“Yeah, well, tell that to the Christians. They’ve pretty much taken over and decided what is and is not proper social etiquette, and at this moment we’re both wearing trousers and men’s coats and I’ve cut all my hair off. Even if you and I know we’re not men, we look like men to the humans, and therefore the rules apply to us whether we like it or not.”

Sorush was still not exactly sure why the government cared so much about who someone went to bed with, Itza’s anxiety was palpable. “Would you rather we just not speak anymore?”

“That is not what I was saying,” Itza said, voice squeaking a little. “Just, no coming over at night, or getting too friendly. Not that you’re ever too friendly so it’s mostly just- Don’t sleep here.”  
“I don’t sleep.”

“You know what I mean! Look, just standing out here on my doorstep too long this late at night is gonna be suspicious if anyone is awake, so how about we get dinner tomorrow or something.” Itza was giving them a look that screamed “please work with me”, and it only hoped they understood.

“Dinner sounds fine,” Sorush said. “I can find you if you need me to. If it’s less suspicious”

“Yeah. Yeah that’s fine.” Itza hung in the doorway, keys still in the lock, not wanting to leave. “Nice seeing you again, Sorush.”

“And you as well, Itza.”

“See you tomorrow.”

“Goodnight.”

  
  
  
  


Itza expected to have to work its magic (if you could call it magic,) on the fox to make its hunt go faster, but it turns out the hounds were feeling their hunger pangs or something, because that fox didn’t even have a chance. The hounds caught it within twenty minutes, and Itza had to vault off its horse to snatch the damn thing and kill it before the dogs ruined the pelt. 

It took its time untacking and dousing its mare, praising her for a job well done and giving her an extra handful of oats as a reward and a promise that the stable boys would give her the grooming of her life in the morning. The other members of the hunt invited Itza out to drinks, but it politely declined in favour of catching a carriage back to London to scrub the smell of horse off of itself before partaking in its own dinner plans.

“Dinner plans, eh?” said one of Itza’s clubmates with a knowing grin, jabbing it in the ribs with an elbow. “Alistair, you  _ dog _ .”

The carriage driver seemed like he wanted to question why his client had an entire dead fox stuffed in its coat, but then Itza tipped them the full amount of the fare on top of the fare itself, and he decided that it didn’t really matter that much, now did it.

It was daydreaming about its huge bathtub brimming with steaming water while unlocking its door, when it felt a flash of holy lightning at its shoulder and nearly had a heart attack.

“Hello Itz...listair,” Sorush said, looking a bit embarrassed to have used the wrong name, again. Then, suddenly: “Oh.  _ Lord. _ ”

Itza was leaning against the railing of the stairs to its door, a hand on its chest in some vain attempt to slow its heartbeat. “What does  _ that  _ mean?”

Sorush’s eyes flicked from Itza’s general person back to its face. “You’re home early.”

“Yes, and somehow you seem to know that. Are you stalking me?”

“No, I’ve just been staying in the area so I could sense when you arrived.”

“Stalking me.”  
“It’s not stalking, it’s waiting. I did not want to be late for dinner. It seemed very important to you.”

Itza composed itself and unlocked the door. “Well you’re going to be waiting even longer; I need a bath. I smell like arse.”

“And dead fox,” Sorush mused, eyes falling on the bulge in Itza’s coat. “Am I allowed inside, or is it too late in the evening?”

Itza disappeared into its flat, leaving the door open behind it. “Come on, creep, make yourself at home.”

The furnishings were fine, if eclectic. Lots of taxidermy, lots of plants, lots of everything, really, topped with wallpaper and window dressings that didn’t quite seem to match, colour-wise. Walking through the parlour room felt more like weaving through an arboretum that occasionally featured a stuffed panther or two, poised as though about to leap from the bushes and devour you. Sorush touched their faces, admiring the craftsmanship.

“Did you do these yourself?”

“Heaven no,” came Itza’s voice from the kitchen. “I mean I killed them, but I’m not as good at making the bodies look right. I pay someone to do that for me.”

“Well they’re beautiful. Compliments to the artist.”

“Yeah he’s great. A little weird but aren’t we all.” 

It padded through the parlour and towards the bedroom door, gesturing at the fireplace that was suddenly filled with a full flame. “Make yourself some tea when the kettle whistles. Sorry it’s dark, but y’know.” It stuck its tongue out and waved a hand in front of its eyes. “I don’t need a lot of light.”

Sorush’s eyes glowed like a cat’s in the dimness. “It’s okay, I don’t either.”

And so Itza disappeared into its room to boil its bathwater with hellfire, leaving Sorush alone in the parlour to wait.

It had been looking forward to taking its time in the bath, but now that someone was waiting on it, it settled for sitting in the tub up to its chin for slightly longer than was comfortable before hastily scrubbing up and getting out, snapping its fingers to disappear the bathwater instantaneously and save itself a trip outside. It used another tiny spark of magic to dry itself off and fluff its hair to the perfect amount of “slightly tousled waves” that the lady humans seemed to like these days, not that it was interested in consorting with any of them.

Sorush was investigating one of Itza’s stag mounts when it finally emerged from the cavern that was its bedroom. They turned to greet it, but the second they spotted the demon standing in the doorway in a suit and hat, they choked on their tea and nearly dropped the saucer onto the floor.

“You alright there?” Itza asked, looking up from fiddling with its cufflinks.

“Mm,” Sorush replied, coughing. “Just surprised me, coming out of the dark like that.”

“Well stop dying and come on. If you hurry, we’ll miss the rush.” It grinned at its joke, but Sorush did not react.

They fell into step next to Itza, hands behind their back. “I’m surprised you don’t just miracle a space open for us before we get there,” they said, an edge of cheek to their voice.

Itza held a hand out seconds before a carriage for hire turned around the corner. “Some of us like to save our miracles for real, important things, like not having to wait for a ride.”

Sorush hummed. “I see. Well regardless, I bet if you stopped by the restaurant at that one posh hotel near the Thames, there’d be a table available, but only if you got there in exactly-” They checked their watch. “Twenty minutes.”

Itza leaned forward to catch the driver’s attention, encouraging him to keep his horse at a faster trot. They were in a hurry, after all.


	8. 1860

“I envy you,” Itza groaned, lifting itself out of the saddle for a moment’s relief. “Being able to turn your senses off like that.”  
Sorush was sitting prim on their mount, but their eyebrows betrayed their anxiety. They did not like horses much, they’d decided, after sitting on one for a good week and a half. “We’re from the same stock, you should still be able to as well,” they said, voice wobbling a little as the horse shifted his weight to the other foot.

Itza stood up in its stirrups, leaning over its horse’s neck to try and stretch out its back. “I’d forgotten how to do that shit even before I fell.”

“I can miracle you if you want,” Sorush offered.

“Eugh, it’d probably light me on fire instead.”

“I thought demons were fireproof.”

“Sure, if it’s  _ hellfire _ . The Holy Ghost flame works about like you’d expect it to.” 

“The Holy Ghost isn’t literal fire, you know-”

“I know, it was a  _ joke _ .” Itza sighed, stretching. “It’s fine, I’ll just have to get used to my arse being numb all the time.”

Sorush seemed to relax. “You’ve been riding a long time, anyway, haven’t you?”

“Yeah, but that was completely different. Different saddle, different purpose. I wasn’t sitting on my hunter horse for twelve hours a day following an angel through the hill country in ninety degree weather.”

“Stop your whinging, we’re heading to the mountains.”

“As  _ slowly as humanly possible _ .”

Itza lay itself across the horse’s neck - a lovely little bay paint gelding with a spirited canter - gazing out over the smattering of cattle being watched over by a nearby group of cowboys on a drive. The animals grazed contentedly, seemingly unbothered by the harsh afternoon sun, unlike the humans (and human-adjacent beings,) who were taking solace in the shade of cottonwood trees.

Sorush had come to America with a research grant to follow in Lewis and Clark’s footsteps and do whatever it is entomologists do. Study bugs or whatever. They’d done this before, gone off to do science who knows where, leaving Itza in London alone. When Sorush was gone, most of Itza’s time was spent sulking in its flat, or out in the woods, collecting birds to sell to hatmakers, counting the days until the angel came home. It had gotten accustomed to their weekly lunch meetings, the conversations in Hyde Park while feeding the geese, the occasional trip to the theatre. It didn’t realize how much it had missed talking to someone with a lifespan of more than sixty or so years.

Usually Sorush would simply inform Itza that they were going to be leaving and then just do so, but this time they asked if it would like to go with them. Itza had jumped at the opportunity under the guise of growing tired of hunting fox and red stags. Maybe the Yankees would have some interesting animals to stalk, like those hares with ridiculously long ears, or sheep with horns so thick they could probably hold a full pint of beer. Definitely nothing to do with the fact that it had found itself lonely without the angel nearby. So Itza locked up its flat, wrote a novel’s worth of instructions of care for its mare and her imminent foal, and loaded up on a boat to take the long way across the Atlantic. Which it complained about the entire time, of course.

“You do know that I’m on a research expedition and we’re going to be traveling on foot the entire time so I can actually see the things I’m here to see, right?” Sorush had asked, giving Itza a look over their cup of weak packet-ship tea. “You can’t just fly to the top of  Heey-otoyoo and call it a successful mission.”

“Sure you can, if your mission was to summit Heey-otoyoo.”

“It wouldn’t be climbing, though. It would be flying.”

“That’s semantics. Nobody climbs a mountain for the experience of climbing, they do it to be the first one at the top. For example: they’re calling it James’ Peak now, because  _ that  _ guy actually made it, unlike Pike.”

“I prefer the name the natives gave it,” Sorush mumbled, returning to their tea.

“Then you should be calling it Tava, not Heey-otoyoo. The Ute were there long before the others.”

Sorush rolled their eyes. “My apologies; we cannot all be so versed in the prehistoric tribes of North American humans as you are.”

Itza studied the ceiling of the cabin for a moment longer, then, grumbling: “I like horses more than I like boats.”

And it was true. Other than moaning occasionally about its ass going numb even on the comparatively padded Western-style saddle, Itza was having a grand time. Turns out the Americans were hiring riders to deliver the mail and Itza was delighted at the opportunity to cause chaos and get paid for it. Its paint was a good horse with a smooth enough gait and good footing, and it enjoyed watching Sorush fret nervously around the hooves of their chosen steed, some green-broke buckskin that they only controlled by virtue of miracles and Itza’s ability to stare menacingly at most animals and have them understand that it could kill them with its mind. It told Sorush not to buy that horse but they’d been too infatuated with the colour to pay attention to the menacing energies it was exuding. “We can trade, you know,” it had offered, but Sorush refused, determined to stick with its decision regardless of how uncomfortable they were every time the horse swung its head around to nip at their boot.

“Do they have towns yet out here? I miss restaurants,” Itza continued complaining. “I could go for some good food. Some wine. Maybe vodka. Anything other than ‘I made this myself in the back of the caravan’ grain hooch. I would also love to have a bath. Or talk to anyone who has had a bath in the last month.”

“Do you want to go home? Or somewhere cooler?” Sorush asked. “You don’t really have to stay in Kansas with me if you don’t want to be here. In fact, I would imagine your employers would prefer if you went a little bit faster toward your destination.”

“Absolutely not,” was the immediate reply. “I’m just hot and grouchy.”

Sorush raised an eyebrow at that comment, but Itza wasn’t looking at them to see it. Instead it was looking off into the distance, its face knit up and pensive.

Sorush had been spending more time watching Itza lately, more than was probably healthy. It was stretched out with its arms crossed across the gelding’s poll, the curve of its spine following that of the horse’s neck, leading the eye downward. It’d enthusiastically adopted the cowboys’ fashion: loose, flowy shirts and tight fitting pants with studded leather chaps. Itza had been letting its hair grow out again, too, a few strands spilling out from underneath its hat to fall around its chin.

“I don’t even know why you took on this job,” Sorush said, prying their eyes back towards the terrain and away from the demon on the paint horse. “Seeing as you’ve blatantly ignored the set route and taken twice as long as everyone else.”

“Wanted something to do instead of just following you around all day,” Itza muttered.

“You were supposed to be in Colorado days ago, and yet you’re still here, barely out of Oklahoma.” They twisted the leather reigns around their fingers absently “ _ I _ should be following _ you _ around, if you were any good at your job.”

“With how many times you jump off your horse to dig around in the dirt for roaches, I’d end up leaving you states behind. There’s all kinds of bad shit out here - outlaws, highwaymen, big great beasties with sharp teeth and a hankering for angel food cake. I  _ have _ to stay here or you’re gonna get snatched up and eaten.”

“You do know I have a sword,” Sorush said. “And I can summon lightning.”

“Monsters aren’t scared of swords and lightning,” Itza said, leaning back in the saddle dramatically. It held out its arms, flames igniting along its sleeves, coiling around its hands. “They’re afraid of fire. And guns, which I have two of.”

“It’s the middle of summer, Itza, put that out,” Sorush hissed. “You’re going to start a wildfire.”

The demon obliged, crossing its arms across its chest and staring pensively at the flat, endless landscape. Predator eyes looking into the sagebrush, honing in on every slightest movement: a bird flitting from bush to bush, a jackrabbit stretching out in the shade, an interestingly-shaped beetle skittering across the sand (which it decided not to mention to Sorush for aforementioned “spending ten minutes staring at every insect” reasons.)

“It’s gonna rain,” it said finally, yawning. “Probably overnight. Should set up camp somewhere sheltered.”

Sorush looked at the wavering horizon. Not a cloud in sight. “It’s nothing but flat scrubland for a thousand miles, and I don’t fancy staying the night with the humans.”

“Sounds like you’ll have to miracle up something, now won’t you?”

Sorush’s resolve withered in seconds beneath Itza’s grin, all sharp incisors and slitted eyes. “Smell me a water source and I’ll see what I can do.”

  
  
  


It took a bit of searching, but Itza got it done, sniffing them a decent-sized creek running through a shallow slice of land somewhere between a glen and a ravine which conveniently featured an overhang just deep enough to fit one demon and one angel, provided they liked one another.

Away from humans, Itza dropped the barriers it usually held around itself, pulling off its shirt so it could free its wings to shield itself from the downpour while it lured some fish into its hands. Sorush followed its example, tossing their jacket into a corner and shaking their own wings out, stretching wide. While usually the one to stand in streams to attract animals, they were content now to sit in the little cave and tend the fire, and if they stole glances over at Itza and the dark lines of the snake tattoo curling down its left arm, or the way the rain highlighted the muscle in its arms as it crouched in the creek, that was between them and God.

It returned within ten minutes with two good-sized bass, soaked to the bone and incredibly proud of itself. It tossed the fish at Sorush, who caught one and got a faceful of slime from the other. They cleaned them together, cross-legged on the ground, tossing the guts outside for the coyotes. The beasts’ eyes glowed green in the firelight but they wouldn’t come any closer, not with Itza staring them down, wings held over its head, hissing like the snake it was when it wasn’t feeling self-conscious. The horses were safe as long as demons sat guard.

Sorush didn’t usually sleep but something about the way the light of the dying fire danced across Itza’s back and lighting up its iridescent feathers made them feel at ease. They planned to just close their eyes for a moment, just to rest, but forgot to open them for hours instead.

They woke up to Itza’s voice, low and growling, coming from outside. It was dark, the storm still drenching the dry, cracked ground, but Sorush could see movement in the shadow, hear the horses shifting restlessly nearby.

“Abaddon is calling for you,” said a voice Sorush didn’t immediately recognize, like the cold that seeps into your bones in the Arctic during winter.

“And he’s sending you to run his errands now?”

“I am here in the stead of someone who may be much less agreeable,” said the voice. “You are shirking your responsibilities.”

“They’re shit responsibilities.”

“This is why you were created.”

“I was  _ created _ to lead souls to the afterlife, not do the devil’s dirty work in wars I don’t give a shit about. Fuck off, I’m tired of it. I’m done.”

“You think Satan will go easier on you than God did?”

“There’s only so far one can fall and I’ve just about gone all the way at this point. Worst Hell can do is kill me, and you’re kidding yourself if you think I wouldn’t welcome it.”

“Don’t invite your demise, Yehudiah.”

“That’s not my name,” Itza snapped, but the other voice was gone, dissipating like mist into the storm.

Itza’s shoulders fell, its wingtips dropping into the mud behind it. It ran its fingers through its hair, growling to itself for a moment before turning and stalking back into the little cave. It dropped to the ground in front of the suddenly reignited fire, head in its hands.

“Who was that?” Sorush asked, wincing as Itza jumped at the sound of their voice.

“Nobody, angel. Go back to sleep.”

“Seemed important, though.”

“It’s not anything you need to worry about.”

“It sounded like you were in some trouble, which makes me think I should worry.”

Itza sighed. “Apparently the humans are about to start another bloody war, and that was Azrael come to drag me to the east coast to work per Abbadon’s request. I told it to fuck off. I’m not going.”

Sorush’s eyes widened. “You can’t just tell  _ Death _ to fuck off.”

“I can, and I did.” Itza stared into the fire, watching it burn by little more than the force of the demon’s frustrations. “I’m done working wars. I’m tired of watching them slaughter each other knowing there’s no reason for it other than pure fucking evil.”

“Funny to hear a demon lament the presence of evil,” Sorush said, more amused than anything.

“Maybe I’m just not attuned to it. Spent too long on the surface and went native or something.” It looked over at Sorush, firelight highlighting their silver hair. “Too much time in the sun.”

“I’m not particularly complaining. If you were properly evil I think Heaven may actually have words about my spending time with you.”

“Aren’t we a pair,” Itza said with a little laugh to its voice. “The world’s shittiest demon and a jobless angel, sitting in a cave in the middle of nowhere, trying to figure out what to do for the rest of our lives.”

“It could be worse,” Sorush said. “We could be trying to figure it out by ourselves.”

Itza stared at them with an intensity that made their heartbeat quicken suddenly, its eyes wide in the dark. They’d felt this before, subtle at first, then strong enough to pinpoint what it was on a certain night in the Australian outback, a tingling in the tip of Sorush’s fingers, spreading up their arms and into their chest, filling the space where the air would go had they remembered to breathe in the moment.

Sorush was not an angel built to be in tune with the humans, their emotions, their desires, but at certain times, if it was strong enough, any angel can feel that most glorious and beautiful of emotions: love. The _ agape  _ of God, the  _ storge _ of a parent, which even the animals felt as they caressed their young in their beds. The white-hot fire of  _ eros _ , the gently encompassing warmth of  _ philia _ . It was all around them, all the time, mixing and melding and becoming just another thing that Sorush tuned out to keep from being distracted.

But Itza felt like a low, deep smoulder, like the coals left behind a roaring inferno, the enduring heat that would warm a home for the remainder of the night, long into the daytime. That heat maintained by careful patience and so, so much time. It was impossible to ignore, stronger than they’d ever felt it.

It hung unspoken between them for so many agonizing heartbeats, so close to being brought into existence, to be given a name, but Itza turned away at last, stretching its arms over its head and yawning.

“Would you like for me to take over coyote duty so you can rest?” Sorush asked, feeling dizzy.

“Nah, it’s fine. If you’re tired, get some rest.”

They stood, stepping around Itza. One hand reached out and brushed its fingers along the alulae of the demon’s wing without them even realizing it, still feeling as though they were floating across the ground. “I’m wide awake now. Don’t worry about it.”

Itza’s wing flinched from their touch, but relaxed just as quickly. “Your angelic vessel gonna be scary enough to ward off monsters?”

Sorush turned around, an incredibly unsettling smile on their face, their sword suddenly in their hand. They held their wings out to their full length, dozens of glittering eyes blinking in the firelight from behind the dust-coloured covert feathers. “You remember the days of 'be not afraid',” they said, and then, in Enochian: “ _ So go the fuck to sleep _ .”

Itza was powerless to disobey.


	9. 1889

“If this doesn’t let up I am going to have to cancel this trip,” Sorush said, shaking raindrops off of their coat as they stepped into the common room of the inn, a puddle forming at their feet. “There is absolutely no way the crew and I can do our jobs in this downpour.”

They dripped their way across the thinly carpeted floor to hang their coat on the hook next to those of their fellow researchers, waving a hand across their person to remove any stray water droplets from their clothing before any damage set in. 

Despite being nearly summer, the rain had caused the temperatures outside to plummet to right around “miserable”, but the roaring fire in the inn’s fireplace had kept the interior of the building warm and inviting. Opposite of the fireplace was the bar equivalent of a Monet - it looked fancy from the sitting area, but once you went up for a drink you realized that the embellishments were peeling off of the veneer, and the scuffs from traveling boots had been buffed out, but not re-stained. Sitting at one of the squeaky leather-upholstered barstools was a red-haired demon, raising an eyebrow in Sorush’s direction, a glass of cheap whiskey in one hand, a cigarette in the other.

“We couldn’t get a train out even if you did cancel,” Itza said as Sorush slid into the seat next to it. “Road’s flooded all the way to the station.”

“You’re probably right,” they sighed. “Maybe I’ll ask the cook if I can go down to the cellar and count the spiders instead of studying butterflies like I’m supposed to be doing. At least it’d be closer to actual entomology than sitting in my room playing solitaire.”

Itza waved the barkeeper over and ordered Sorush an old fashioned. “Here, drown your sorrows in alcohol like everyone else.”

“I’ll be drowning in other things before too much longer,” they grumbled, but sipped the drink regardless. It was a little too sour, but they weren’t really concerned with the flavour. The alcohol would hit regardless of how it tasted.

“This is pretty normal for this time of year,” the bartender said casually. “April showers bring May flowers, or however the saying goes.”

“Someone better let God know it’s nearly June, then,” Itza said.

_ If only it were that easy _ , Sorush thought wryly.

The heavy front doors swung open again, and another group of frustrated patrons stepped through, shaking water off of their clothes and hanging their hats on the hat stand. Their friends that had stayed in the inn quickly joined them from upstairs, and soon the previously quiet building was bustling with activity. A baker’s dozen of researchers loitered around the bar, chatting with the bartender, and occasionally the door would admit yet another draught of cold, wet air, and an additional human seeking refuge from the storm. The bar, shabby as it was, was well stocked, and it seemed that everyone caught on this side of the flooded street was using it as a replacement for the taverns they would normally patronize. The inn had a big common room, booze, and a fire that Sorush was no longer convinced wasn’t demonically influenced to stay at the perfect temperature - it didn’t take long until there was a healthy buzz of background noise to cover up any quiet conversations between supernatural beings.

“I would try to do something about the rain if it didn’t mean the possibility of getting chided by an Archangel for having too dramatic an influence upon the natural world, or some horseshit like that,” Sorush said, sotto voce.

“Don’t you outrank the Archangels?” Itza asked. “Just give ‘em a Heavenly finger and tell them where they can go.”

Sorush sighed. “It’s more like we work in different offices now,” they explained. “I might work on the top floor with the Seraphim but the Archangels are like the management of everything that goes on on Earth...or something like that.”

Itza grunted in acknowledgement. It had once been a Stronghold, not that the title mattered when it never actually had to stand rank in Heaven. It couldn’t even remember what it looked like up there, much less what the different positions meant. God had created Death, then immediately created Itza to clean up after it. It hadn’t even known there was a Rebellion until after Hell had been carved out of the depths of the universe, much less fought in it.

“The longer I’m around humans, the more the fact that Heaven operates like a corporate entity makes me nervous,” Itza said. “Hell is a Godless place in more ways than one, but at least if someone talks shit I can smack them and not worry about getting fired.”

“When was the last time you were even Downstairs, anyway?” Sorush asked, pushing their now empty glass across the bar for the bartender to refill.

Itza made a hissing noise with its teeth. “I dunno, a month or two. I’ve been a good little demon and haven’t given them a reason to bitch at me lately.”

“Nothing’s blown up in a while either, which probably helps.”

Itza stubbed its cigarette out and leaned forward with its elbows on the bar. “I’m sure they’ll think of something eventually.”

Sorush tried to smile. “Well, there is a flood outside. Plenty of animals drowning to fill your quota with.”

Itza looked over its shoulder at the humans behind them, laughing and talking about whatever they felt important to share with one another with what little breath they had left. “Hopefully it’s just animals.”

“If you start counting, let me know,” Sorush said, putting a hand on Itza’s shoulder. “We can leave.”

“Yeah, sure,” it said, shrugging Sorush’s hand away.

It was doing this more often lately, Sorush had noticed, the rejection of them in public. They tried to understand that Itza was likely only doing so in order to appease the humans, but the things humans did never really made sense, despite spending enormous amounts of time around them. The obsession with genitals and where to put them was frankly boggling to someone who didn’t have any at all unless they deemed it necessary (and they had not, thus far, deemed it necessary.)

Itza was much more in tune with the humans than Sorush was. It spent a lot of time fussing over its clothes and its hair and yet seemed so uncomfortable at nearly any given time Sorush was in its vicinity, which was, Sorush was realizing, quite often these days. Nearly every day it seemed the demon was sauntering into their office and inviting them to lunch, dinner, to a play at the Theatre Royal, or just to relay its day’s activities while sitting on their paperwork. Once it had brought them a small potted fern to set on their desk, which it had described as “nigh impossible to kill, so perfect for you, angel.”

But whenever they were together Itza was always hyper-aware of how close they stood, how long it looked at them, the words it said. So different from how it had been for most of their lives, so comfortable in its skin, never quite fitting into the human boxes of “male” and “female”, existing somewhere outside and within them both at the same time, fluid and ever-changing. Now it seemed like it only felt safe in a suit, but was all too eager to rip off its layers the second it stepped through its own front door.

The only time Sorush got to see the real Itza these days was when it inevitably begged them to accompany it on its occasional solo research excursions (which the university would normally never approve, but Dr. Rush could be very convincing when he needed to be.) They had been scheduling these trips more often, just for the chance to see it open those shining black-and-white wings to the sky again and see the light in its eyes like they had so long ago.

They were dragged then, into a conversation about something Itza knew more about, but when they turned back towards the bar to call to it, the demon had disappeared.

  
  
  
  


The bartender had been watching them from the corner of his eye this entire time they were at the bar. Itza knew that he had not heard their conversation - background noise aside, any conversation about supernatural things simply slid in one human ear and out of the other, nothing said ever sticking in their minds. What he had  _ seen,  _ however, was a different story.

The humans knew Itza was no scientist just by looking at it, and yet it had still walked into the inn at Sorush’s side and let them pay for its room. It skulked around town (and now more recently, the bar, lest it drown,) waiting for the good Doctor to come back every evening like their most loyal dog.

_ Stupid, _ it scolded itself as it made its way up the stairs to its room. _ Stupid stupid.  _ Why had it even come on this trip, it knew it wouldn’t be one of the safe ones, where it was just the two of them in the wilderness where nobody would call the police on it if it spent too long staring at its companion. It knew better. It wasn’t  _ trying  _ to ruin its life, and yet it kept pulling this shit at every opportunity. Sorush said “oh I’m going away for a while” and the interior of Itza’s brain suddenly sounded like a fire klaxon screeching through downtown.

It was, frankly, getting ridiculous.

And so it had excused itself from the common room once one of Sorush’s bug friends had distracted them, tossing the barkeeper a couple more bills than the usual tip to shut him up, and making its way up the stairs to its room.

The rooms were small but nice, well furnished with old but ornate chairs near the window, and a full-sized bed covered in a faded duvet. Itza didn’t bother turning on the light, preferring to exist in the more comfortable darkness. The rain was relentlessly pelting the window, giving the scene a horror novel feeling. A demon standing in an old hotel room on a dark and stormy night.

Itza took its glasses off and set them on the end table before walking over to the surprisingly modern radiator and turning the knob. The radiator responded with a half-hearted thunk, then quieted, beginning its work at slowly warming up the room.

_ Sorush probably wouldn’t have bothered _ , it thought as it pulled its shirt out of its trousers and kicked off its shoes into a corner. Sometimes it envied the angel who simply forgot to feel the temperature of the air outside. Itza had well and truly gone native now. It stripped off the rest of its clothes and encouraged the water to run hot through the pipes to the, once again, surprisingly modern shower. Its hair was still too short for its liking and it was tired of being called “sir”, but it tried to keep telling itself it was better this way, even if it wasn’t good.

It stood in the shower for a long time, letting the hot water pelt its shoulders long past the time when the boiler would have normally run cold, staring through the floor, watching the rivulets run off of its fingertips. Showers were one of those things, like alcohol. It didn’t need them, but they felt nice. Like the water would somehow scrub the sin out from under its skin and it would walk out angelic again.

It had thought about that before, if it wanted to reascend. To somehow be forgiven for mouthing off to God and get its halo back. But for what? It’s not like it ever got to see Heaven, to feel God’s presence. Just a lot of hanging out at disaster sites and talking to dead people. At least as a demon it could swear and nobody would give it a weird look.

Itza wrenched the faucet off, shaking its head to clear the water from its hair. The pipes knocked in the walls as they contracted in the cold, adding to the ambiance. The room was decently warm by the time it stepped out of the bathroom, perfectly dry. It crossed over to the dresser, pulling on a pair of cotton pajamas and a knit shirt, a deep v-neck that revealed more than a little of the snake’s head inked beneath the skin of its left collarbone.

There was a massive book on the bedside table that Itza was looking forward to getting back into to distract itself from the emotions that threatened to keep it up all night. The story within was also wonderfully morose, Itza firmly within the portion of the novel wherein the sailor was imprisoned for next to no reason, and spent a lot of time learning how to do math from his friend in the next cell over to keep from killing himself (it found this bit very relatable.)

It sat on top of the duvet, propping itself up on the ample pillows and set the book in its lap, ready to lose the next few hours of its life to a nice contemporary depiction of early nineteenth century France.

Which of course it didn’t get to do, because as soon as it got comfortable, the door to the room swung open, and Itza proceeded to throw itself off of the bed and onto the floor in lieu of allowing someone to see it in such a state of undress.

“Itza,” said a familiar voice.

The lamp next to the bed flickered on without being touched, revealing Itza’s indignant face popping up from behind the bed. “Rush! Don’t call me that in front of the humans!”

“There’s no one out here but me. What are you doing on the floor?”

Itza stood up, pulling the neckline of its shirt upward, so as to hide its chest. “Trying to protect my dignity. You know that door was locked, right?”

“Yes, well, I needed to talk to you.”

“You couldn’t knock?”

“You’ve never had qualms with me inviting myself in before.”

“We’re in a _ hotel _ , angel. It’s not quite the same as you popping by the flat for a cup of tea.”

Sorush balled their hands into fists in a surprisingly childlike manner. “Can I just talk to you about something without you scolding me, just this once?”

There was a severity to their voice that gave Itza pause. It snapped its fingers, and the door locked behind them.

“I’ve been trying to call Upstairs again,” Sorush said, releasing their fists.

“And?”

“I keep getting hung up on.”

Itza snorted. “Unsurprising. Why is this worth telling me now? Haven’t they been ignoring you since the Inquisition?”

“It’s different,” Sorush said, fidgeting with the cuff of their sleeve. “I think they’re ignoring me on purpose now.”

“Look, Sorush, not that you aren’t lovely to talk with, but I’m trying real hard to understand why you’ve busted into my room while I was trying to wind down for the night with the Count, risking the wandering minds of the humans who have definitely noticed how friendly you’ve been and most certainly will notice you walking out of my room in the middle of the night to tell me things that we both already know and have known for centuries.”

Sorush’s face didn’t change, but Itza could see the journey their thoughts went on behind their eyes.

“I’m concerned,” Sorush continued, filing Itza’s words away for later, “That Heaven is purposefully keeping things from me. Disaster after disaster befalls the humans and I don’t know it’s happening until you start counting the dead. The whole plague thing in London - I’m not the only angel who can do that but nobody even told me about it happening. I’ve been down here for millennia and nobody is telling me  _ anything. _ ”

Itza leaned one elbow on the mattress. “Are you upset because you’re bored with entomology and want something more to do? Because I’m sure you could start smiting politicians and Heaven would rejoice at your efforts.”

“Itza, do you remember who I was, before you Fell?”

“You were the angel God sent to kill the humans when they pissed Her off.”

“I was the angel that _ judged the Fallen _ . I oversaw the construction of the circles of Hell, I’m the one who was sent to Egypt to perform the Exodus because I was literally constructed to be a vessel of God’s vengeance. I sent thousands of fallen angels into the lake of fire without batting an eye because I have no allegiance except to God Herself, and when She says cast them out, I cast them out.”

Itza was staring at them with dilated eyes, and Sorush wasn’t sure if it was awe or fear they saw on its face.

“ _ I _ should have been the one called to send you to Hell,” they said, quietly. “But I wasn’t. That is  _ my  _ job,  _ I’m  _ the one you should have stood before, but it was Gabriel instead. An  _ Archangel _ . And then, after I watched someone else do the job that God created me for, I get sent on an indefinite vacation.”

“You think they’re trying to replace you?”

“I don’t know. It’s not that I wish I was getting called on jobs so much as I wish I knew what they were  _ doing _ up there. I can’t get in touch with God, and haven’t since before the London plague, and nobody will tell me anything more than ‘enjoy your time off, Armageddon is coming before you know it’.”

“Angel, I’m always here to vent if you need it,” Itza said, its voice strained. “But if you’re wanting advice, I don’t think I’m the best person to be asking.”

Sorush’s lips tightened into a thin line, their fingers twisting their doctoral ring around their finger nervously. “I don’t know if I trust Heaven anymore,” they said.

The hair on the back of Itza’s neck prickled.

“I thought that you, of all beings on Earth, would be able to empathise with that.”

Itza managed now to crawl up onto the bed, rubbing at its sore knees. “My kind aren’t really known for being very good at that stuff, empathy, sorry. Most of those lovey-dovey emotions don’t work on us, especially not love itself.”

“Is that really true, or is it just what you’ve been told?”

Itza made an uncomfortable sound. “Well, I mean, it’s all anecdotal, but I can’t say I’ve ever had a strong positive emotion about many things, so I can only assume it’s true.”

Sorush hummed dismissively.

“So then what’s your plan?” Itza said, trying to change the subject.

“I don’t know. I can only hope that God is aware of it and the Archangels are working within Her will.”

Itza bit back a cynical remark and settled instead for awkwardly patting Sorush on the shoulder. “She’s got the whole world in Her hands, right? Like they keep saying, there’s always Armageddon. If you don’t get called to the front lines for that I’ll eat my scythe.”

Sorush’s eyes followed Itza’s hand as it made its way back to the demon’s lap. “I’m not sure I am looking forward to Armageddon anymore.”

“Oh come on, you just spent the last ten minutes whinging about how you miss doing your job, now you’re telling me you aren’t interested in the guaranteed contract that you just have to stick it out for?”

“Yes, well. Lately I’ve gotten rather fond of Earth and certain things on it.”

Those moths were awake in Itza’s rib cage again, and it didn’t dare open its mouth lest they all fly out and cause a scene. 

So maybe it’d lied a little about the strong positive emotions thing. Didn’t mean it was  _ love, _ though. Could very well be lust, which is a perfectly demonic thing to feel. Though it’d always imagined lust to be less fluttery moths and more flaming loins or however humans described it in their books. Not an overwhelming urge to pull the angel into its chest and pat their curls gently and soothe them to sleep.

“Well, I should get back to my room,” Sorush said, pretending to yawn. “It’s getting late. Sorry for unloading on you, I just needed to get it out.”

“It’s fine, just-” Itza looked over at the door.

“I know.”

There was a soft “pop” as the air rushed in to fill the space where Sorush used to be sitting, leaving Itza alone in its hotel room with a tightness in its chest that it still wasn’t ready to sit down and unpack.

It scooted to the head of the bed and shimmied underneath the duvet, picking up its book to try and salvage what was left of the night, but not even Dumas’ masterful prose could keep its mind from creeping back to the memory of Sorush’s face and the way their fingers twirled the gold band around their finger. 

Oh, foolish, foolish demon, like Icarus flying too close to the sun.

Itza slid its bookmark between the pages, no words read, and flipped the lamp off, forcing itself to sleep despite the protests of the radiator, banging in harmony with its traitorous heart.

  
  
  
  


The morning brought more of the same, weather-wise - the downpour showed no hint of letting up any time soon, even as the sun began its ascent behind the wet, gray clouds. Sorush watched the sky turn from brown to gray to slightly lighter gray, the daylight revealing even more muddy brown water running through the streets. There would be no science done today, either. 

They sat in the lounge chair next to the window until they heard Itza’s door open (their rooms weren’t next to one another, but Sorush could recognize the way Itza opened doors anywhere by now,) waited what they hoped was an appropriate amount of time before pulling on their jacket and making their way into the common room.

The room was filled with chatter about the storm, lamenting the inability of anyone to make it across the road to the café for a decent breakfast. The hotel staff was doing their best to satisfy everyone with sandwiches and eggs and milk from one of the farms up the hill, but the atmosphere was grim, to say the least.

“How were the cellar spiders?” Itza asked them, leaning against the wall near the bar with a glass of wine in its hand.

“Alistair, it’s ten in the morning,” Sorush said, plucking the glass from its hand and swallowing it in one gulp. “And they were lovely, but nothing the university hasn’t seen before.”

Itza frowned at them, unsure if they were more annoyed that they’d drank its wine, or that they seemed intent to keep the glass. “What else am I supposed to do stuffed up in here all day but drink,” it grumbled. “I can’t even go for a walk around outside to cause problems like I usually can. There’s only so many staff in this hotel I can irritate before it stops being fun and eviction becomes an actual possibility.”

“You could always come with me, if you get bored on these trips. Your hands would save us a fortune on alcohol for euthanizing specimens.”

The demon shifted on its feet uncomfortably. “Ah, I don’t fit in with your weird bug mates...couldn’t tell you the difference between  _ flexivitta _ and  _ cinerea _ if my life depended on it. I’d mostly just get in the way if I went out with you.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about any of that,” Sorush said, a smile in their voice. “You  _ do _ spend a lot of time in my office.”

Itza was looking over its shoulder at the humans chattering nearby, clearly stressed. “That doesn’t mean I pay attention to anything in there.”

Sorush hummed disbelievingly into a now miraculously refilled glass. “I’m sure.”

“Well, you’re not doing any science today anyway, which means I’m stuck in here drinking first thing in the morning like an underpaid businessman,” Itza grumbled. “Are you sure you’re not allowed to at least divert some water away from the train station so we can leave?”

“With how often I’ve been bothering Gabriel lately, I’d really rather not. Stick it out for one more day, and if it’s still raining in the morning I’ll get us at least to Philadelphia.”

Some newly emboldened thunder shook the building, a fresh wave of rain beating against the windows loud enough to be heard over the ambient chatter.

“Better fire up the holy teleportation lightning,” Itza said looking up at the old, wood-trellis ceiling. “‘Cause otherwise we’re leaving on a Coast Guard boat.”

“Oh, I’m not sure it’s that bad yet. The locals say it’d been flooding every year lately; I’m sure they’re used to this and well prepared to deal with it.”

The lights flickered above them, eliciting a chorus of soft, surprised gasps.

“I hope you’re right,” Itza said, taking its glass of wine back.

There wasn’t much to do in the hotel besides stand around and socialize around the fire and drink, which eventually grew more than a little riotous for Sorush. The alcohol loosened up the humans, and their laughter and arguments were now echoing loudly off of the high ceiling, the wood walls, the proud elk mount mounted above the fireplace. Someone dropped a whiskey glass, and Sorush decided they would rather stand in the flooded street than deal with the testosterone-fueled fistfights that would inevitably occur next.

Itza was playing poker for pennies with some burly hunter-type man (definitely more of its type of person to socialize with, for sure,) and losing pretty solidly when Sorush appeared at its shoulder and asked if it would, by chance, like to go see if there were any interesting amounts of ants floating around outside.

“Ants?” Itza asked, raising an eyebrow and giving Sorush a look over the rims of its glasses.

“I’m sure there’s plenty of spiders, too.”

It took a moment for recognition to dawn on Itza’s face. “Oh. Right, yeah, here, let me just-” It threw its hand down (two of hearts, the ace of clubs, king of spades, and a six of diamonds,) and excused itself.

“Here, to apologize,” Itza said, pulling a ten dollar note out of its jacket pocket and tossing it onto the table.

The hunter protested, but Itza had already turned away to fall into step beside Sorush, weaving through groups of tipsy researchers and factory workers on their way out the front door.

“It was getting too loud again,” Sorush said once they were outside. The rain was falling sideways, but the two of them were still dry beneath the covered porch as long as they stood near the door.

“I don’t think it’s much quieter out here,” Itza muttered, pulling its jacket closed against the cold air.

“No, but there aren’t too many insects in my room.”

Itza smiled. “I should have known you weren’t just making excuses. Well, we’re out here and so are the ants. Look away, angel.”

“I was hoping you could help with that,” Sorush said. “You’re much better at finding little things that scurry in the dark than I am.”

“I’m sure you’re about to tell me that my heightened demonic senses are another way I would be useful in the field, aren’t you?” Itza asked, inhaling deeply and closing its eyes.

“I also just like spending time with you.”

Itza sighed its exhale. “There’s six balls of fire ants underneath the porch and about a dozen different kinds of spiders hiding in the rafters. Two woodpeckers in the tree across the street, a stray cat in the grocery store attic, and lightning is going to flash in-” it counted down on its fingers, reaching one at the exact second a blue-white light illuminated the landscape around them.

“You never fail to impress,” Sorush said, standing on their tiptoes to peer into the shadowed corners of the porch roof as the thunder shook the floor. “You really would be helpful, though, you know.”

“I couldn’t do this every other month. I’ve got responsibilities at the country club, with the horses. I already shouldn’t have come on this trip, really, but I didn’t-”

Sorush dropped back onto their heels, a slender-legged spider on their hand. “Didn’t what?”

“Nothing.”

Sorush held their hand out, bringing the spider into better focus for Itza’s nearsighted eyes. The spider was large, about the size of a quarter, with dark stripes across its face. It looked up at Itza with curious black eyes, and the demon could feel the rapid-fire thoughts as it struggled to understand what it was seeing.

“A rabid wolf spider,” Sorush said. “Incredibly common, and with a terrible name, but still lovely. And this one is a mother, see?”

Gently, they touched the swollen abdomen, which immediately shattered into a thousand spiderlings, flowing over their hand like zero-gravity liquid. The panicked voices of the babies filled Itza’s mind, followed by the mother’s encouraging intentions, drawing her children back to their resting place on her back. Hundreds of eyes now watched the demon, glittering in the darkness.

“The humans think them vile for the unsettling way the spiderlings scatter, but they’re one of the few species of arthropods that care for their young,” Sorush continued. “Some species of spider will even make the ultimate sacrifice, and the young consume the body of the mother after they hatch. The humans used to think that only ‘higher’ animals gave parental care, but now we know that something so lowly and wicked as a wolf spider may be capable of so complicated a thing as love.”

Itza stood there on the porch, an expression of pain written across its face as Sorush placed the spider back in the shadowy corner they found her in. Its fingers twitched like they wanted to reach out and grab something, but it was fighting the impulse with every fiber of its being. The wind-tossed flames from the gas lamps above the door cast flickering shadows across its face, deepening the lines behind its eyes.

The spider on the angel’s hand had tingled with glimmers of storge, but when Sorush looked back at Itza standing there with the storm at its back, something else filled the air between them. Like the smoke of many incenses swirling together in their lungs, radiating from their core to the tips of their fingers, making them light-headed.

_ There it is, _ they thought. But then the dam broke.

  
  
  
  


It took an hour for the waters to reach Johnstown, but by that time Itza was already well within its panic. Sorush stood at its shoulder unsure of what to do as the roar of the wave rose in chorus with the wail of the souls it took in its wake.

There was no town anymore. The rain had trapped them indoors then the flood had collapsed their homes atop them, and whoever wasn’t crushed was drowned beneath ten feet of mud and water, tangled in barbed wire and debris.

War was one thing. Humans expect to die in wars. They sign up to die in wars, willingly throwing themselves in the line of fire for glory or commendation or the self-congratulatory feeling that they may be pushing doggedly through the shit, but they’re doing it for what would be a better world at the end of it all. But this, this was Egypt, this was Jericho, this was Canaan, this was Midian. This was the whole of the middle east under water so deep it covered the tops of the tallest mountains and the whole of the region had to start over from scratch. Itza remembered it all too vividly, the endless landscape of rippling brown, diving into that frigid ocean to drag yet another innocent soul from its muddy depths.

That was the beginning of it, the questioning, the doubt, that led to its unceremonious eviction. Standing shivering on one of the few places the flood didn’t reach, staring at the rain that never stopped falling and wondering what made the ones in the boat different from the ones bloating beneath the surface.

“You said this wouldn’t happen again,” Itza said to the sky, raindrops stinging its eyes. “I thought this is what the rainbows were for? To remind them that you made a promise never to flood them again?”

It felt Sorush move beside it, the weight of their presence suddenly gone, leaving Itza alone in the frigid rain. Its breath caught in its throat, eyes snapping around, looking for them, seeing them step forward, away from them, taking away the only comfort it had in the world. Cold fingers grabbed at theirs, nails digging into their skin.

“Please,” Itza whispered, “Don’t leave me again.”

The angel had stepped in front of Itza now and pulled it into their chest, holding the demon against them like they would never let it go. They both were soaked through to the bone, but Sorush’s hands were warm, their pulse like a drum beneath Itza’s fingers. Uncaring of if anyone were alive to see, they wrapped their wings around them both, shielding them from the rain, and stood there together until Itza stopped counting, so many hours later.


	10. 1923

“What on earth,” Sorush exclaimed, leaning over the balcony of their apartment. “Is _that_?”

On the street below, Itza grinned up at them, holding its hands out in front of its latest acquisition. “You don’t like it?”

“I don’t know what it _is_ ,” Sorush called. “Besides big, black, and belching smoke.”

“It’s a Rolls-Royce! Cost me an arm and a leg! Come down here and I’ll take you for a drive!”  
“I would rather ride from New York to Colorado on that greenbroke horse again than put one finger in that monstrosity.”

“ _Samuelllll_ ,” Itza whined. “Don’t you trust me?”

“Absolutely not! Last time I trusted you to take me somewhere we wound up lost for a week in the Sahara!”

“What if I told you I got reservations at the Algonquin?”

Sorush pursed their lips. “Did you?”

“If you come with me, I did.”

There was a fair amount of grousing coming from the angel on the third-floor balcony, which Itza patiently waited through. Finally Sorush leaned over the railing again and announced that fine, they would put on their coat and come down, but only if Itza did not drive as fast as it possibly could through Manhattan. Begrudgingly, it agreed. 

It held the door for Sorush (it was a demon, not a monster,) and handed them it's sunglasses in lieu of riding goggles before giving the engine another good crank and sputtering off towards Times Square.

It was Sorush’s idea, moving here. They’d been in England for too long, the humans were starting to get suspicious as to why one of the longest-tenured researchers at the university wasn’t seeming to age. They could only miracle them into ignoring their eternally youthful visage for so long. And it was their third university, anyway; and there’s only so many of them in London. It was time for a change.

Sorush had shared the news casually over the university’s office telephone, and Itza had broken multiple laws of physics to make it across the entirety of London to their office as fast as it had.

“America? Why _America_?”

Sorush looked up at the demon leaning over their desk. “Why not? Nobody will recognize me to wonder why I’m still alive, and it was nice enough, last time I went. Much less gloomy on the whole than London, for sure. Maybe I’ll get a tan.”

“What about all this?” Itza waved its arms around the room, gesturing towards the framed certifications, the cases full of insects that Sorush had discovered hung on the walls, the sword mounted behind their chair, the little fern sitting in a pot on their desk.

“They’re just _things_ , and things can be placed into boxes and loaded onto ships and transported to another continent. I don’t even have that many things, so it’s not like it’d be expensive.”

“Yeah, but…” Itza made some uncomfortable sounds with its throat. “It’s a long way away, isn’t it?”

Sorush was confused. “It’s just America. We’ve traveled the whole world just about, nothing really feels too far away anymore.”

“Maybe to you; _I_ can’t teleport on a whim.”

“Are you upset because you think I’m leaving you?”

Itza’s cheeks puffed up. “I’m just concerned about your pocketbook, angel. Make sure you aren’t jumping the gun.”

Sorush picked up a stack of paperwork and tapped it on the desk, straightening the sheets. “How selfless of you,” they said.

“Because of course _I’ve_ got a life here, and I’m definitely not thinking of leaving all that to follow you around the new world.”

“Of course not.”

“I’ve got all these horses, and all these people that want to buy their offspring…”

“Pity to have to disappoint all those horse clients.”

“It really would be, they’re what’s keeping me in suits.”

Sorush set the stack of paper in the outbox. “Would you like to come to America with me?”

Itza did a poor job of pretending that’s not why it had come to the university in the first place.

New York had been a compromise. The decision to stay in Manhattan was mostly in Sorush’s favour, with plenty of universities to choose from, and Itza begrudgingly accepted that it was fun here, if not a bit cramped. The locals liked to call it the city that never sleeps, which was perfect for two beings who didn’t need to sleep at all.

Itza ended up having to leave some houseplants behind, and all of its taxidermy (which, compared to modern mounts, were laughable anyway.) Really, the only things they brought to America between the two of them were a few changes of clothes, a very confused horse, and one particularly sentimental fern. The rest, they agreed, they’d figure out when they arrived.

They landed at Plymouth just as the bullet punched through Franz Ferdinand’s throat, and Itza spent the next year meticulously counting the collections at Sorush’s new college. The collections manager was overjoyed (they named a wing in the biology building after it,) but Sorush saw the scars on Itza’s hands from where its nails picked away at the skin at night whenever it couldn’t sleep.

At least, it said, one night in 1918, leaning out of its apartment window with a cigarette in one hand, nobody had showed up to tell it to go to France and walk the trenches.

The twenties, it was convinced, would be its decade. They had electricity, they had cars, they had radio, television was rapidly becoming a reality, and those lads with the saxophones were turning music on its head. Itza was here for it. The only downer was Prohibition, but it had a number of secret handshakes and silver coins in its pockets, and its throat never went dry for too long.

Sorush had the thought that they should probably disapprove of Itza’s patronage of speakeasies, since it was, technically, illegal, but they found themselves making exceptions on those nights Itza showed up half-pissed on their doorstep with a paper bag that Sorush knew contained some very strong whiskey. Never _great_ whiskey, but you don’t need great whiskey to have a good time.

Sorush stayed in a modest brownstone in the Upper West Side, while Itza holed up in SoHo, chosen simply because it thought it was funny that there was one of those in America, too. It was just as big a trash heap as its English cousin, but there was something about the specific brand of working-class American debauchery that Itza enjoyed. Plus, if it needed new cabinets or a china dining set, all it had to do was go downstairs. 

(Anyone who dared to make a comment about why it chose SoHo over Hell’s Kitchen would get a smack for their trouble. Bad puns were a Hellish creation, but like many of Hell’s creations, Itza wanted nothing to do with them. Plus, it was incredibly racist.)

“What would Hepburn think,” Sorush asked, watching the city fly past outside the car.

“She doesn’t,” Itza replied. “She’s a horse.”

“You planning on selling her now that you’ve got this monstrosity?”

“Absolutely _not_. I’ve been working on her bloodline for over a hundred years; I’ll chop a leg off before I sell that horse.”

“Do you even get to properly ride her anymore?”

Itza turned a corner a little too sharply, causing Sorush to grip the door with white knuckles. “Every now and then,” it said. “But usually she’s with the trainers.”

“I’m still not sure how I feel about your newfound racing hobby,” Sorush said wryly. “Being as you’ve stumbled upon it in blind tigers.”

“There’s nothing nefarious in being the one who _owns_ the horses, angel. If they run fast you get paid a lot of money and if they don’t you get dinner for the next six months.”

“That doesn’t mean you’re not going to be gambling on race-day, too, though.”

Itza was indignant. “So what if I am! I can just not tell you about it, if that makes it easier for you to keep your little halo on straight while you reap the benefits of me raking in the dough at Belmont every year.”

“You don’t even need the money,” Sorush argued. “You can just make it if you need to pay for something.”

“Yeah, but it’s _fun_. Rich humans are horrible people and it could almost be argued I’m doing God’s work by cheating them out of their money. Also they get suspicious if you have lots of expensive things and no job. Claiming inheritance only sends them down the ‘oh, who was your grandfather’ rabbit hole and I’m not interested in having to explain why I’m the spitting image of my last three ancestors again.”

Itza parked the car on the street (it wasn’t illegal yet, but it would be soon,) pulled off its driving gloves, and walked around to the passenger side to hold the door for its companion.

“Just promise me you’ll be nice to them,” Sorush said. “The horses, I mean. They may be God’s second most wicked animal, but they are still technically innocent.”

Itza plucked its sunglasses from Sorush’s face and returned them to their rightful place. “Since when have I ever been mean to horses?”

“I’ve heard you going at the dogs while you’re trying to eat in the park. If those little old women knew what you were saying to their pets they’d have you arrested.”

Itza curled its lip. “I’m convinced Hell itself is responsible for those tiny dogs and their bad attitudes. They deserve every yip I give them.”

The two of them were seated immediately, of course, at a corner table away from most of the noise. Itza complained about the lack of champagne to Sorush, who took it in stride, content just to spend time out of the house for a little while. They would never admit it to Itza, but the car was fun. Maybe one day they’d ask it to teach them to drive.

Sorush sipped at their water, only half listening to Itza talk about horses, its face animated, eyes bright behind its glasses, hands never still. The backdrop may be new and shiny: heavy curtains and floral arrangements and white linen tablecloths, but Itza’s hair was still short and its suits were still black, its apartment still full of plants and dead animals and gold foil art deco wallpaper and curtains that clashed with it - so different and shining and yet exactly the same.

It had a certain cadence to its voice that Sorush didn’t recognize, a twist to its wrist that wasn’t there yesterday. It crossed its legs one knee over the other, leaning with its elbow on the table, chin in hand, swirling its straw in its soda absently while explaining the importance of knowing the pedigree of the horse you plan to bet on. The demon was up to something.

Sorush willingly stepped back into the Rolls when they were done, Itza having successfully unloaded its petty annoyances upon the shoulders of its angel and gushed about something it loved for a while, its stance looser, a devilish little smile on its face as they drove the long way around Central Park.

“What are your plans for the afternoon?” It asked, in a way that Sorush had learned was intended to sound casual but was actually loaded as hell.

“Probably stay in with a record and some pinning supplies,” Sorush replied, to which Itza nodded understandably.

“You got room in that cavern you call an apartment for me to sit for a while?” Then, immediately, a little flustered, “I’ve got a project I’m working on, but it’s boring to just sit and sew by yourself, you know, I can bring some alcohol-”

“Mixing liquor and needles is a terrible idea,” Sorush said. “But yes, you can come sit on my couch for a while if you like.”

“Good. I mean, thanks. Uh, I know it’s a bit of a drive to SoHo and you don’t seem to be a fan of cars but-”

Sorush leaned against the window, looking out at the city lights. “Oh, it’s growing on me.”

  
  
  
  


Sorush was trying very hard to concentrate on what they were doing. It really wasn’t this difficult to pin beetles to a corkboard. Take pin, stab through the thorax, spread the wings beneath thin sheets of paper, pin the paper to the board, move to the next one. Rinse, repeat. Actually don’t rinse, it would rot the- 

This. This was the problem. They couldn’t focus on anything because there was a demon sitting next to them on the couch with ball-point pins in its mouth, hand sewing a pearl-gray fur coat to the tune of _Anathema_ on the radio.

It wasn’t the first time it had been here, sitting on the couch, a six foot tall smudge of charcoal on an otherwise stark-white minimalist’s wet dream. But usually they were only stopping by for a minute or two, bringing them a bottle of wine or whiskey, waiting for them to get all of their layers on so the two of them could make a mad dash to the theatre before the curtain rose. Not simply _existing_ in the space like it lived here, relaxed and comfortable, its sleeves rolled up and shirt untucked, socked feet crossed delicately one over the other.

They’d spent inordinate amounts of time together inside of train cars and ship cabins and had never had a problem, but somehow tonight, in the close quarters of Sorush’s studio apartment, the concentration of Itza’s emotions was overwhelming. Sorush hadn’t had a drop of liquor, but they still felt hot under the collar, forcing them to have to shed a few (admittedly extraneous for simply lounging around the house,) layers lest they actually get sweaty.

“Hey, do you have a measuring tape?” Itza asked, breaking the relative silence.

Sorush jumped at the sound, and prayed it hadn’t noticed. “I don’t think so.”

“It’s fine, I’ll just…” It stood up in lieu of finishing its thought, walking over to Sorush’s coat rack, selecting their well-loved overcoat and bringing it back to the couch with them. It draped the coat over its knees and lay one of the pieces of fur on top of the coat’s back yoke, marking the dimensions on the leather with chalk.

“Is that supposed to be for me?”

Itza looked up at them indignantly. “Who else would it be for, the King? _I’m_ not gonna wear this light of fur, that’s for damn sure.”

“Oh.”

Itza turned back to its work. “I went to a fur farm in France a while back and thought this shade would look good on you,” it mumbled. “So I bought all the ones available with this fur. I’m not sure I’ll have enough to make a full-length coat but I still have his address, so I can always get more.”

“I see,” Sorush said, trying to ignore the fact that they felt as though they were full of live eels. “Thank you.”

“You need something fashionable from this century to wear when you have fancy bug events in the winter,” Itza continued. “Humans look at you weird wearing the same waistcoat you bought in 1835, especially when there’s a foot of snow outside and you’re only in a light driving jacket. You gotta get with the times, angel.”

Sorush was transfixed by its hands, sliding the pins through the leather in a perfectly spaced line, connecting the chest, the yoke, the collar. It didn’t seem to need a pattern, just the sizes of the pieces: the length of sleeves, the width of the shoulders. The chalk lines were an almost perfect sketch of the coat Sorush had been wearing for a hundred years, as though Itza was so familiar with it that it knew the construction exactly.

 _Oh,_ realized Sorush, a split second before they stabbed themselves nearly through the finger with a pin.

“Shit,” they hissed, dropping everything to grab at their finger, blood dripping down onto the corkboard and onto one of the beetles. “Shit, shit, shit!”  
“Y’alright there?” Itza asked.

“I’m bleeding all over my specimens,” Sorush said sadly, annoyed with themself for allowing this to happen. They couldn’t remember the last time their heart even bothered pumping, but it sure was doing a lot of it right now. Maybe even more than it was supposed to. There was quite a lot of blood dripping down their hand.

Itza reached out, casually wrapping its hand around Soush’s fingers, and they felt the hole seal up in an instant, leaving nothing but a slight stinging sensation. In their finger, anyway. The rest of their body felt like it had ignited, and they truly expected to see flames when they looked down.

It let go, and as its hand moved through the space over the table, the blood dissipated from the board.

Sorush could hear the smirk in its voice. “Try not to do that again.”

“I’ll do my best,” they said, trying to catch their breath.

  
  
  


\---

  
  
  


Itza didn’t care for Hell, much. It was not because the entire place was basically the equivalent of an endlessly-expanding ant’s nest of tiny, overcrowded hallways (and there are _only_ hallways. Gotta save room for the chasm in the centre of the place, you know.) It also wasn’t necessarily the other demons - who was Itza to feel revulsion at the amounts of boils, flies, or glitter when it was made of the same stuff as they were. Beauty was in the eye of the beholder, after all. It wasn’t even the oppressively humid heat. Snakes love humid heat.

No, what drove Itza up the grimy, be-postered walls, was the _smell_. The entire place smelled like brimstone and smoke and burnt hair and rotting meat, the latter of which Itza could care less about, but that first one was a doozy.

One of the things about snakes, is their senses are a little scrambled. They taste the air to smell it, and some can see the heat from their prey in total darkness. The humans would eventually come to call it synaesthesia when these phenomenon occurred in themselves, but Itza just called it having a reptile as its source material. Where it used to see the aura of souls, Itza now saw the world in black-and-white with an overlay of ever-shifting heat vision like silver waves around everything alive (or mostly alive,) in the room. This would be disorienting enough, but unfortunately for Itza, someone read the manual doubly wrong when re-wiring up this body, crossing its sight with the whole “tasting the air to smell it” ability, and now every time Itza opened its mouth, the world lit up in technicolour. Which sounds like it’d be wonderful, given that it was otherwise completely colour-blind, and sometimes it was, but Hell tasted like the worst shade of eye (tongue?) burning magenta one could imagine, and Itza really could do without that.

So needless to say, visits to the office were nothing short of sensory overload. Returning to the surface didn’t provide much respite, however, the harsh midday sun often triggering the beginnings of a migraine, even behind dark glasses. Fucking sensitive predator eyes.

The smell lingered on its clothes, following it through the crowds and into the Wall Street station, flashing pink behind its eyes as it broke a five into dimes to pay its fare.

Sorush was waiting for it behind the turnstile, sitting on a bench and reading a newspaper. “Know where you’re headed?” they asked, folding the paper up and setting it back in the rack nearby.

“Yeah,” Itza sighed, lighting a cigarette. Not that the colour of cigarettes was much better aesthetically, but drab gray-green was easier on the visual cortex. “They want me in California for a few weeks. Apparently there’ll be a good earthquake in the Humboldt area soon.”

“Ah,” said Sorush, not sure where Humboldt was but knowing full well how seismic the west coast tended to be.

“Obviously I’m just going to take out a few pets then go sit on the beach in Santa Monica for a week.”

“Of course.”

The humans around them began mumbling to themselves as a train that wasn’t supposed to arrive for five more minutes pulled up to the platform. The confused but pleasantly surprised passengers filed out, and Sorush and Itza stepped on, walking all the way to the back. The seats were nearly full, and the human who took the last one found it to be suddenly unpleasantly wet, so they decided instead to stand instead. Itza gladly took the seat, shooting its former occupant a smarmy grin, leaning back and getting comfortable. Sorush opted to remain standing.

“At least this time we can take the train across the country, instead of having to ride horses,” said Sorush, not missing the opportunity to give Itza a disapproving stare for bullying a human out of a seat.

Itza snorted. “That’s what, four days? Stuck in a passenger car with a bunch of rich strangers? Probably getting murdered or whatever it is that happens on cross-country trains?”

“You can claim responsibility for the deaths and get a commendation. Besides, I’d rather deal with a murder mystery on a train than try to _drive_ all that way. It’d probably take a week, even the way you drive.”

“The way _I_ drive? What’s that supposed to mean?”

Sorush shot Itza a look as the subway inexplicably sped up. “You must also think about the state of the roads from here to northern California. If they even have roads. I feel like horses would be akin to laying on the couch for a week in comparison to the Rolls in the middle of Wyoming.”

“You have a point,” Itza conceded. “My arse says the train is probably the way to go.”

“How long do you expect you’ll need to stay there in order to accomplish your goals?”  
“A month at least, maybe more. I could pretend I’ve taken some extra time to tempt celebrities to try new designer drugs, or something.”  
“Then I suppose we’ll need to get things in order for our absence then?”  
“ _Our_ absence? Your university bosses gonna let you come with me all the way across the country?”  
Sorush shrugged. “I’m sure I could come up with some excuse. I could offer to work in La Brea; I’m sure they’d love that.”

“It’s been a fucking era since I’ve been to California,” Itza mused, stretching out in its seat, much to the annoyance of those around it. “I’ve heard it’s slightly more upscale these days.”

“Mm, the last time we were there you spent most of your time inventing pyrite to get the humans out of the places you’d actually smelled gold, then miracling it out of the ground so you didn’t have to do any work.”

Itza was grinning. “You complain, but that ill-gotten gold bought you that entire suit you’ve been wearing since we got back to England. I also broke up that band of outlaws that had been bothering the prospectors, but you never thanked me for that.”

“Yes, by rotting all of their food and causing them to be violently ill,” Sorush said wryly. “I’m _loathe_ to imagine what mischief you’ll find yourself involved in now, so close to Hollywood.”

“You’re just jealous that I’ve got a timeless face that’s perfect for the movies, and your entire person is more suited to giving lectures on the Dewey decimal system.”

“Keep insulting me and I will cancel our evening plans.”

“Ah, yes, the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away,” said Itza, mockingly. “You don’t scare me, angel; you’re the one who begged to go see the symphony. I’m just the poor sod responsible for getting you there.”

If anyone had been looking at their watch, they’d have noticed that the train went just a tiny bit faster than usual, at least until it reached Canal Street and two particular passengers exited the car.

“Oh look, it’s snowing, “ Sorush murmured as they stepped back up to the surface. Little flurry flakes were beginning to fall, piling up in the corners of the street. “Looks like I don’t need you and your transport services after all.”

Itza complained about having to put the Rolls Royce up on blocks for the winter, insisting that this snow wouldn’t be a big deal. It’ll melt tomorrow, it’s only November, it’ll be at least another month ‘til the snow really starts to pile up, right? It wasn’t ready to give up the car, not yet, not so soon.

“I don’t see what’s wrong with what you’ve got on,” Sorush said by way of distracting Itza from its lamentations, trying to lead it towards the apartment door. “It’s a nice enough jacket; I’m pretty sure they’d let you into the concert hall just fine.”

Itza obeyed, unlocking the door and holding it open for Sorush. “Probably, but it’s not the vibe I’m after tonight.”

Sorush wasn’t sure what a “vibe” was, but they were interested to find out what the one Itza had chosen would look like. Though they suspected it would involve a tailored jacket, fine leather shoes, and the colour black.

Itza emerged from its bedroom no less than a half-hour later wearing a knee-length lace flapper dress with a sheer chiffon bodice, its tattoo on full display. Its hair, previously combed back like any other mens’ style, was now styled down and curled at the ends, falling just below its black diamond studded ears.

“Oh,” Sorush said, intelligently.

Itza held up a necklace in each hand - one a string of black pearls, the other a simple chain. “Pick.”

“Pearls.”

“Cool,” it said, and disappeared back into the room, leaving Sorush to process what had just happened alone.

It had been a very long time since Sorush had seen Itza in anything other than a suit and coat. They weren’t quite sure what had changed within its mind, but the angel thought they may very much enjoy these new and modern times, indeed.

Five minutes later it emerged again, this time wearing kitten heels, lipstick, and heavy amounts of eyeshadow that made the deep red of its eyes seem to jump out from its face. A decadently plush black and silver fur coat was slung over one arm as it pulled on a pair of elbow-length gloves. Its fingers fumbled at the satin seams, out of practice unless it was looking. It tried to catch Sorush’s attention from across the room, (like it hadn’t had their attention from the second it stepped out of the room the first time.) “Ready?” it asked.

Sorush nodded, pulling their own coat back over their shoulders. “So which part of this is the vibe?”

Itza waved its hands around its general area. “The whole thing! The whole thing is a vibe!”

“It looks like a dress to me.”

The demon groaned. “The outfit, the look, the _vibe_ , you get it?”

“You could have just said you wanted to dress like a woman and it’d have made much more sense, you know.”

“I wanted it to be a surprise,” Itza pouted. “It’s been a long time since we’ve gotten to go out...like this.”

The unspoken words hung between them. _Like we don’t have to hide_.

It stood there somewhat awkwardly, unsure of how to carry itself in this presentation anymore. Its feet a little too far apart, its shoulders a little too square. But beneath the trepidation Sorush could see the light in Itza’s eyes again. That just the act of being seen as something _else_ , something _different_ , even if it wasn’t perfect, was enough.

“Well, you look lovely,” they said, and the flash of emotion that Itza produced nearly knocked them off their feet.

They leaned - hopefully casually - against the wall, trying to steady themself. Itza, seemingly oblivious, pulled on the coat, the long, thick pile engulfing it in luxury.

“What kind of rabbit is that, anyway?” Sorush asked.

Itza held out an arm to admire the fur. “Some new breed, I think they’re calling it Heavyweight Silver? I rather like it. Reminds me of the night sky.”

Sorush looked down at their watch. “We’ve got a half hour ‘til the show starts and a twenty-minute train ride. Collect your remaining vibes and let’s go.”

Itza tried to explain that vibes were to be felt, not collected, while giving itself a final once-over in a mirror. Satisfied with the state of its face and the amount of jewelry on its person, it turned to leave, catching a glimpse of Sorush from the corner of its eye.

“That’s not what you wore here,” it said slowly.

Sorush had entered the apartment wearing the same thing it always wore on nice nights out - tan waistcoat, tan jacket, none of the pieces having been made within the last fifty years. But now the air around the angel was crackling with holy magic, and instead of their usual overcoat, they were wearing a pearl-coloured rabbit coat, and their cravat was a deeper shade that Itza had the sneaking suspicion matched its lipstick perfectly.

“I was feeling the vibe,” they said. “Besides, you’re always bitching at me to dress more modern. This is the newest thing I own.”

“Hm,” said Itza as it slid its arm into Sorush’s and stepped out into the night, their shoulders immediately dusted with snow. “It looks nice on you.”

“Thank you, I have an excellent furrier.”

Itza smiled. A real, genuine smile that reached every part of its face, crinkling the corners of its eyes. “You’ll have to give me their number, then. I could use a new hat.”

The feeling wasn’t so overwhelming outside here in the streets, but Sorush still felt as though they were floating just inches from the ground, the places where Itza touched them tingling, just a little. Eros, philia, pragma; they weren't sure what it was quite yet, but _oh_ , they thought, as Itza leaned its shoulder into theirs, they certainly could get used to this.


	11. 1945

Twenty years later, Hell came personally to Itza’s doorstep.

Orobas stood out on the mat, a gleam in his jet-black eyes as he told Itza what was happening, like it hadn’t already been counting the corpses strewn across western Europe from all the way across the pond.

“I’m not leaving,” Itza growled. It’d been twisting a Rolex onto its wrist, dressed to the nines in pinstripes and mirror-shined saddle oxfords, its pocket square the same colour as a certain angel’s favourite cravat (it knew, because they confirmed it.)

“Looks like ya are,” Orobas replied smugly.

“I meant I’m not leaving  _ New York _ ,” Itza said.

“Yeh, but the boss wants ya over there.”

“I’m busy with stuff over here; It’s too much trouble to up and fly to Germany to twiddle my thumbs for six years. I don’t need to go follow Nazis around to make sure they kill people, they’re quite adept at that on their own.”

Orobas pointed at Itza’s clothes. “Goin’ see yer angel? That what’s keepin’ ya so busy? Does the boss know yer cavorting with the enemy?”

Itza hissed to cover up its internal screaming. “I’m playing a long con,” it said. “Get them comfortable around me then I’ll chop their head off or whatever.”

“Fighting angels is dangerous,” Orobas said, completely unconvinced. “They got all that lightning and holy water n’ shit. There’s a reason we’re waitin’ ‘til the end of the world to have a go at ‘em, so we can have as many human souls as possible to use as meat shields. Or soul-shields, whatever.”

Itza pulled on its coat, trying to signal Orobas that it was going to be late for its rendezvous, but unfortunately it seemed that Itza was the only demon on the planet with social skills. “Look, if I manage to kill this one, it’ll boost morale and maybe inspire everyone to attack preemptively. If I die, you can use me as a lesson to not fuck with angels. Win-win for Hell.”

“And how long do ya think thwarting the wiles of this angel is gonna take?”

“Well I’ve been working on it for a good thousand years or so, so I dunno, another century or two? If you want a formal excuse slip I can make you one, but really, I need to get to the station before I miss the train.” It snapped its fingers, producing a slip of paper with an official Infernal letterhead, signing its name (its real one, the one it doesn’t use, and neither does anyone else, but legal documents don’t care much about anyone’s preferred names, no matter what dimension you’re from,) on the X before handing it to Orobas. “Let Be-elzebub know they can go fuck themselves.”

Itza went on its date (it wouldn’t call it that, but Sorush was wearing a boutonniere of a crow’s skull, and it could only be assumed,) to the exclusive jazz club that Sorush had found through their mysterious grapevine of dandy men who spent a lot of time together, but even the music, drinks, and camaraderie of those who wouldn’t judge them for sitting a little closer than they normally would couldn’t distract it enough from the constant uptick of souls. 

They were accosted outside of the club by a lackey demon, her lip curled into a sneer as she handed Itza its request form, stamped with a red seal reading “DENIED”.

“Guess who’s going to Germanyyyy,” the demon said in a Bondi drawl, and Itza felt Sorush’s hand tighten in its own.

  
  
  
  


Itza left in without telling Sorush where it was going, slipping a letter into their mail slot in the dead of night, hoping they were asleep (they weren’t,) or at least not in the room (they were.) Where it was going was no place for angels. It was hardly a place for demons, either, Itza decided once it stepped onto European soil. It had been a demon a long, long time, but some of the evils that humans came up with were far more devastating than anything it could ever dream of.

It walked into Hell with the Bondi demon’s hands gripping its elbow tight enough to bruise, forced through the labyrinth of winding, twisting corridors until they found the right door that opened into a government building in the centre of Munich (because really, Hell didn’t need to be subtle here,) and it was assigned some role or other it definitely wasn’t going to do. You could lead the demon to the warzone, but you couldn’t make it work.

Ground zero was excruciating. A non-stop barrage of grief that winded Itza the second it stepped out of the elevator, an anxiety that wrapped itself around its mind and sunk its claws into its chest, tightening like a winch with every passing day. The anguish built upon itself exponentially, until Itza had forgotten who it was trying to be, and all it felt was crazy.

The smell of smoke hung in Itza’s mouth, no amount of whiskey or tobacco able to wash the memory from its mind, the sounds from its ears. The cold winter air cut through the holes in the gloves where it’d picked apart the seams, unable to stop counting the ever-growing mountain of souls. There were days it never woke up in an attempt to curb the compulsion, only to wake up lying on the floor of its apartment unable to move, to think, anything but count, count, count.

Nobody else could hear it, could feel it, the cacophony in its head, driving out nearly every thought it tried to have. It lost count of the days, gray and white blending with the darkness and the stars shining above, bright in the blackouts. They bled into weeks, bled into months, bled into years, desperately seeking anything to make it stop hearing, make it stop thinking. Some things made the world go too slow, some made them go too fast. Some made them forget everything except the sound of angel’s wings, and Itza had bought all of those that it could until the one who sold it wound up with a bullet through his head, then suffered the consequences of it all leaving its system, unable to find more.

The second winter found it at yet another bar, trying to forget what it’d spent all day doing, feeling the eyes of everyone else on it as it continued to produce marks from its pocket to buy yet another glass of scotch. It had forgotten how many it was on, now, but it didn’t care. It’d drink til it passed out, like it did every night, magic away the hangover, then go do it all over again the next evening.

“I’m amazed you’re still standing,” the bartender commented as he slid another whiskey across the bar towards Itza. “You’re gonna feel like shit in the morning.”

Itza just gave him a sour look from behind its shades and knocked the entire glass back in one go. “I’m paying you to pour drinks, not comment on my life choices.”

The bartender tentatively refilled it again. “This is your last one, pal. I can’t be responsible for you dying of alcohol poisoning.”

Itza took a more reserved sip. “Fine.” This was at least number six. When the humans started to get concerned, it figured it should probably move on.

The bell over the bar’s door rang, announcing the arrival of yet another damned soul. Itza didn’t bother looking. It would probably be shooting them too in a couple of days anyway.

“Something nice and alcoholic,” the newcomer said, their voice like gilded arrows punching through Itza’s chest.

Sorush sat on the stool next to the demon at the bar, taking a hefty drink of whatever was in its glass.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Itza said in a voice only Sorush could hear.

“And yet I am.”

“I specifically told you not to follow me.”

“And yet I did.”

They finished their drink and asked for another. “I needed to see it for myself.”

“Yeah? How’d that go for you?”

Sorush looked up at Itza wordlessly, letting the state of their person speak for itself. They looked exhausted, deep shadows under their eyes, their hair disheveled, the lines deep around their mouth. Itza had never seen them exhausted before in five thousand years.

It turned back to its drink. “Yeah. Same here.”

“Hell’s outdone itself this time,” they sighed.

“As far as I know, this was the humans’ idea. Just like the Inquisition, the Crusades, the first World War, and every other time they’ve gone and slaughtered one another for no other reason than greed and hatred.” Itza snorted. “Turns out there’s not much need for us to be here most of the time, other than to encourage them along occasionally. Humans are evil enough on their own.”

Sorush’s brows were knit up and Itza wished it had something to say to change the subject, but sitting here in a bar in central Munich, it was hard to ignore the elephant in the room.

“I just don’t understand,” they said. “These...are Her chosen people. And She’s just letting this happen.  _ Everyone’s _ just letting this happen. I seen hair nor hide of anyone from Upstairs in hundreds of years, and now...now the most important humans on the planet are being rounded up like cattle and  _ nobody’s fucking doing anything _ .”

Their hands balled into fists. “Two massive wars back to back, and in the middle, the worst economic downswing the world has ever seen. And I was consulted for  _ none of it _ .”

“I remember when if anyone even looked at her special children funny I was being called over to toss them into the nearest ring of Hell,” Itza said. “Whichever one they fit into best, no matter if they were just innocent fucking people who happened to live in the city over which the person who gave the look stood guard.”

“Do you think She even still cares?”

“I don’t know. My best guess is She realized she made a mistake after the whole Jesus situation and fucked off to another reality to try again.”

“I can’t...I can’t believe that,” Sorush said, voice cracking. “I can’t believe She’s just left like that. I can’t believe She’s given up on us.”

“I hope for your sake you’re right.”

“I’m hoping for yours, too, you know.”

Itza stared through its glass with unfocused eyes. “Don’t waste your prayers on me, angel, I’m long past redeeming.”

“Not to me, you’re not.”

The words felt like someone pushing a sugar-coated knife between Itza’s ribs and twisting, a sweet pain that closed up its throat and dug into its heart.

It finished its drink and dropped the glass dramatically on the bartop. “Listen, you can’t be seen with me here. I don’t think they bought my excuse for you being around back in America, and they certainly won’t buy your being in Germany simply a coincidence. Every other person in the street is reporting to one of us; you’re vastly outnumbered here. It won’t end pretty if someone catches us together.”

“Then we won’t be caught,” said Sorush, as though it were the most obvious solution in the world.

Itza’s chest ached. “I mean it this time, Sorush. Stay away from me. Please.”

There was something in Itza’s voice, beneath the stress and exhaustion and alcohol and the way it whispered so only they could hear. Sorush couldn’t see its eyes but they could feel it in the lines around its mouth, its brow. The way it was dragging the edge of a nail across scabbed fingers.

Sorush reached into their pocket and pulled out a scrap of paper. “In case you need it anyway.”

Itza didn’t look at what was written, just shoved the paper in its pocket, stood up, and left.

  
  


\---

  
  
  


Sorush lay the candles in the ring they’d drawn in chalk on the floor of the house they were renting in Lochhausen, the small, thin flames the only light in the room. The shades were drawn, the furniture pushed back against the walls, not even a fire set in the woodstove. They lit the final flame, waving out the match, breathing in the smell of the smoke and wondering what colour it would be behind Itza’s eyes.

“This is Sorush, Ophanim, God’s hand in Judgement, please get me an Archangel,” they said with no enthusiasm in their voice.

The circle lit up, the glow pulsing slowly.

“Yeah, what do you want?” Gabriel’s voice said, distracted, through the light.

“So I’m currently in Germany-”

“Oh hey, yeah, that’s great, do you mind giving someone a message from me next time you’re in Munich?”

“I...sure, but-” Sorush stammered. “You know what’s happening down here, right? With the whole...Nazis thing and all?”

“Heaven knows everything that happens down there.”

“Is anyone...trying to do anything about it?”

“Oh sure, there’s people down there here and there. I think a couple of Principalities.”

Sorush was flabbergasted. “A couple of Principalities are all you’ve sent for the whole of the Nazi war machine? You know those are the Jews they’re killing, right?’

They could imagine Gabriel waving his hand dismissively, eyes rolling. “It’s the Great Plan, Sorush. We’re not really here to interfere, just influence the humans to make their own good choices, you know. And protect them, to an extent, if you’re a guardian.”

“I remember turning the Nile to blood because someone was persecuting the Jews,” Sorush said, feeling anger swell inside them. “And I also I remember when having sex with giants was enough of a reason for God to drown the whole of Mesopotamia. And now Jews are being slaughtered in the millions just for existing and I’ve not heard a peep from _ anyone  _ about it.”

“Be careful how you talk of God’s plans,” Gabriel snapped. “Everything happens for a reason, even genocide. It’s all by Her design, and it’s not our place to question it.”

“I really do not think-”

“Yeah, that’s your problem, you think too much. If you ask me, it sounds like you’ve been spending too with that demon; it’s a bad influence on you. Now, I really have a lot of work to do with the whole  _ actually  _ starting Armageddon thing, so you’re gonna have to figure out what you’re planning on doing in the meantime on your own, okay?”

And then, again, for the dozenth time, he hung up, leaving Sorush standing in a dark room alone, with no more answers than when they’d started.

  
  
  
  


Itza lived in a flat downtown that had bare walls and wood floors and a single couch that it tried and failed to sleep on every night. It hated spending time there, avoiding it at all costs, but eventually the bars close up or throw you out and wandering the streets was just as bad as listening to the souls wail from the floor. It was times like these that it was thankful for its ability to intimidate bottles of liquid into never running empty no matter how much Itza drank.

This is where it was now, Sorush’s note heavy in the pocket of its jacket that it didn’t bother taking off.

“How can You say You love them then let this shit happen?” Itza asked its ceiling, the edges of its vision growing fuzzy. “Do You even care about them anymore?”

Thousands of years ago, the Son of God stood before those He called His friends and told them to take His word to the world. “Go to the lost sheep of Israel,” Jesus had said, “Heal the sick, raise the dead.” He told them that they would be hated, would be persecuted, for the things that they said, but it would be okay, because God would be with them.

“Not a single sparrow falls to the ground without God knowing,” Jesus had said, thousands of years before. “So fear not, my friends. Fear not.”

“You said they were more valuable than many sparrows,” said a demon on the floor to the ceiling overhead in 1945. “But I don’t see You sending tragedy after tragedy to slaughter  _ them _ by the thousands while they beg for mercy on their knees.”

It pressed its palms into its eyes. “Who am I kidding, You’re not listening to me. Not anymore. You gave up on me ages ago.”

  
  
  
  


Itza got a reputation for being short-fused, and it leaned into it, venting its frustrations on those around it. Fingertips sparking as it lit cigarettes to hide the smoke seeping from between its teeth, struggling to keep itself anchored to its vessel. It was getting harder and harder, the stress and the anger pouring out of every molecule in its body, breaking it down from the inside out. It could feel the pockmarks of its heat sensors opening up beneath its eyes like scars, its teeth too sharp, its tongue too split. The skin along its spine rippling like a python’s scales, iridescent black like the wings that threatened to burst from its shoulders. If a doctor held a thermometer to its tongue they would immediately push it into ice, wondering why it wasn’t delirious with a fever so high, like fire burning it from the inside, hot to the touch.

The snap, in the end, wasn’t surprising. It turned a corner and saw the things it drank all night to forget, and Itza’s hand had wrapped around the officer’s throat as the life drained from his eyes and it felt like any other day. There was never a struggle. It barely took effort. How many could it kill before Downstairs found out?

Not enough. Never enough.

“What in Heaven do you think yer doing,” Be-elzebub hissed, slamming the door behind them, pointing a finger at Itza. It was sitting in a chair across from Be-elzebub’s desk, one of the only proper offices in Hell, approximately the size of a broom closet. There was even a light in the room, flickering at just the right speed to give Itza a headache.

“I’m doing my job,” Itza said, crossing its arms across its chest. It bounced one leg incessantly, trying very hard not to pick the seams out of its brand new leather gloves that it had been purchasing when the Prince themself had cornered it outside of the shop (in England, of course, where it wasn’t supposed to be,) and dragged it through a maintenance door and back into the ant’s nest.

Be-elzebub dropped into their chair, kicking their feet up onto the desk. “Buying leather goods in London is not yer job.”

“You want to pull my file up then, and make sure I’ve got enough deaths this week to be able to take the time off to hop over the channel to buy myself some new fucking gloves?”

Be-elzebub narrowed their eyes. “Why not go to Italy?”

Itza returned the glare. “Because I was closer to England.”

“Is that where Sorush is staying?” Be-elzebub’s face curled into a sneer at the way Itza’s face struggled to stay straight. “Shame yer a big fuckin’ snake, ‘cause yer eyes just turned into dinnerplates an’ gave it all away.”

“Sorush has nothing to do with my work,” Itza said, trying to rein it’s pupils in. “I was in England to buy gloves from a tailor I liked back when I lived there because I’m a loyal customer. Last I knew the angel was still in New York.”

Be-elzebub leaned their elbow on the desk and set their chin in their palm. “Actually they’re in Munich. Which you know about, because someone saw you talking to them at a bar last week.”

Itza growled. “Fine, they came to me. That was the last time I saw them.”

“I also know that you’ve been killing animals instead of humans since the sixteenth century. That is, until a week ago, almost exactly twenty-four hours after you had drinks with an angel at a bar.” Their sneer disappeared, replaced with a snarl. “When you killed a low-ranking officer and thought nobody saw. Three years go by without anyone dropping dead mysteriously and then suddenly there’s a serial killer on the loose right in the radius you’ve been assigned. Do you really think I’m that stupid? Azrael may be covering for you while you’re off lollygagging, but did you know that if you ask an angel a question, it can’t lie?

“I’ve lost count of how many times you’ve directly disobeyed orders to fuck off an do yer own thing, and I’m gettin’ kinda fed up with it. You pull this shit again, I’m contacting lower authority, and yer not gonna like that, trust me.”

Itza snorted. “So it’s fine that I’ve spent most of human history killing pigeons and foxes instead of the animals you want me to kill, but the second I start actually doing my job, I get dragged down to corporate and told off?”

“When you run away to America and make a living as a taxidermist or a race fixer or whatever it is you do, you at least aren’t  _ actively _ thwarting our goals,” Be-elzebub growled. “Fucking angels won’t make you holy again, no matter how good in bed you are.”

“I don’t want to be holy,” Itza said. “I just want to be left alone.”

“You don’t get to be left alone. This is yer  _ life _ , yer whole purpose for existing. You don’t get to just  _ quit  _ being a demon like it’s some kind of job.”

“And if I just leave and refuse to do anything you say anyway?”

“The punishment for treason is death, you know. Not discorporation,  _ death _ . Is that what yer wanting?”

Itza stood up from the chair wordlessly, shoving its hands in its pockets. It moved towards the door, Be-elzebub’s voice following it.

“Yer on thin ice, death-dealer. Hell is watching you.”

_ There’s worse things than death _ , Itza thought, then walked out of the door and back into most of them.

  
  
  
  


Itza had kept the slip of paper in its pocket, just in case. Never actually looking at it, just knowing it was there, feeling the edges on its fingers when the compulsions were strongest, until the fibers began to fray apart into dust and pulp. It’d tried to last another year, sneaking about in the shadows, trying to avoid anyone that smelled like a demon (but everyone smelled like a demon, every single one of them in their slick black coats.) Hell’s eyes were on its back but it could feel itself falling apart at the seams, closer than it’d ever come before. Finally, it was time for divine intervention.

On the paper was the address to a little house just outside of Munich, and Itza could feel the angel before it even got to the front door to knock. The waves of holiness burned like the sun on pale skin after so long in this pit of evil, but it grit its teeth and stayed put, praying to anyone who would listen that they were home, that they’d answer.

The sight of Sorush’s face nearly sent Itza to its knees. They were just as exhausted as it was, and there was a gun in their hand pointed at Itza’s face, but they were wearing that same stupid suit and had that same stupid hair and that same expression that nobody else could read and they were the most beautiful thing Itza had ever seen in its five thousand years of life.

“Angel,” was all it got out before falling into them, clinging to their coat as though they were a raft in the middle of a raging ocean. “I can’t do it anymore. I’m losing my fucking mind.”

“You’re not the only one,” Sorush said, and the sadness in their voice nearly sent Itza over the edge. “But I wasn’t leaving without you.”

Sorush sewed the seams in Itza’s new gloves, closing up its wounds when it opened them again, over and over again without complaint. Itza waited for Hell to come up through the floor and drag it back down, but the next day passed, then the next, then the next, and the only thing beneath its feet was the wood slat floor of Sorush’s house.

“There’s a protection rune,” they explained, running their fingers through Itza’s hair, its head in their lap as they sat on the couch, listening to a record play on the turntable one of them, neither could remember, had dragged through reality from New York to rural Germany. “Scrambles the radar, essentially, and won’t let any evil inside.”

“I got in easy enough.”

“Yes, well,” they said. “It is an old spell.”

Itza stared out of the window, trying to focus on the music and not the never-ending carousel of suffering in their mind, not realizing it was scraping its thumb again until Sorush pushed their fingers between Itza’s and held its hand still.

“It still feels like we should be back there, doing something. I could have taken care of more of them...”

“You were there for years, Itza.”

“Being a coward and trying to pretend it wasn’t happening. I have these abilities, I could have done more-”

Sorush cut it off. “At the cost of yourself? Would it be worth it?”

Itza’s words died in its throat. Selfishness was supposed to be in its nature, but Itza was never good at being a demon, was it?

“I’m not worth much anymore,” it said. “Not even to Hell.”

“You’re worth something to me.”

Itza looked up into their face, studying the freckles dotted across their skin like constellations. “Why do you still do this? With me?”

“You’re my friend,” Sorush said.

“Am I really? Or am I just the only other thing on the planet you can relate to, because you’re immortal and humans aren’t?”

“You’re my friend,” Sorush said again, solidly. “Who happens to be an immortal.”

“I’m a  _ demon _ .”

“A terrible one.”  
“You’re an angel.”

“Also a terrible one.”

“We aren’t supposed to be friends.”

“And yet we are.”

Itza closed its eyes. “For how long?”

“At least until Armageddon,” Sorush said. “But hopefully even after.”

“How do you know _ this  _ isn’t Armageddon?”

Sorush’s eyes lost their focus. “I wouldn’t be here if it was.”

Itza looked up at them, studying their face. “You gonna fight when they call you?”

“It’s what I was created for.”

“We both know that means nothing.”

Sorush offered to heal its scars, too, but Itza wanted to remember them, all the ones it should have helped, the ones it should have done something more about. Every name it’d never know because it was too much of a coward to do the job it was made to do. So instead they just held Itza’s hands when the bombs fell and the speakers on the record player didn’t go loud enough to cover the tragedy ringing in its head.

Sorush watched judgement rain on the television screen and wondered if the demon was right. That God had given up on them, and nothing on this planet could stop evil from sinking its teeth into the humans and ripping them apart. It was done in the name of desperation, but did the ends truly justify the means? Was this - all this, this suffering, this death, this war, this pollution - all worth it?

Neither the angel nor the demon could really blame Her if She had.

They went back to New York in 1950, and Itza nearly cried when it found its Rolls Royce still parked on blocks where it’d left it. The houseplants needed some encouragement to recover from their decade of neglect, and everything needed a good dusting, but more or less everything was exactly as it was. Sorush stood smiling softly in Itza’s sitting room while it ran around snapping at everything, miracling the dust away and repairing sun damage on a cougar mount set near a window whose curtains never got closed.

They sat on the sofa and drank tea from a box labeled “blue” that evening while they watched The Lone Ranger ride across the tiny black and white screen, such a marvel of modern technology. Sorush wouldn’t say it looked happy, not with scars on its hands or circles so dark beneath its eyes. But it was sitting with its feet up on the couch, leaned over against the angel, its knees just barely leaned over their lap, and for the first time in a long time, Sorush’s heart was set to beating.


	12. 1969

“Oy, angel, you know where my leather jacket is?”

Itza was standing in Sorush’s front hallway, eyes flicking around the mostly bare room. Unsatisfied with what it saw, it disappeared again, heavy-booted footsteps clomping off towards the bedroom that Sorush never used (but Itza did.) 

Sorush didn’t look up from the book they were attempting to read. “Am I your jacket’s keeper?” they asked absently, annoyed that they’d had to re-read the same line three times before they actually parsed what the words said. Itza had several leather jackets, and it always seemed like half of them were strewn around Sorush’s apartment. And if they weren’t there, they were slung over the back of that chair in Sorush’s office, the one across from their desk that no one regularly sat in. No one but Itza.

“Well it’s not at my place,” Itza complained, appearing in what was intended to be the dining room, on the other side of the living room. “And if it’s not at my place, it’s usually at yours.”

Sorush looked up now, finally, eyes landing easily on Itza. It no longer stood out dramatically from the rest of the room, white wallpaper replaced with dark wood paneling and earth-toned carpets (by the landlord, not Sorush, who would have preferred it all to stay the same forever,) but it was still a dramatic view. It looked disheveled (or perhaps that was on purpose? Sorush was having trouble telling these days,) its hair short and curly and sticking up everywhere, dark eyeliner smudged. What it was wearing would have otherwise been unimportant, if it weren’t for the fact that its elbows creaked as it turned to investigate the display cases behind it.

“Itza,” Sorush said slowly. “Would your missing jacket perhaps be on your body at this very moment?”

The demon’s face popped back out from around the wall. “What? No, this isn’t the jacket I’m looking for.” It disappeared, the sound of cabinets opening continuing. “I need the one with the...y’know, the stuff on the back.”

“That one you have on has stuff on the back.”

Itza’s voice wandered through the kitchen and back into the hallway, towards the bedroom. “Wrong stuff on the back,” it said.

Sorush did not understand what could possibly be on the back of a jacket that was so important that someone would need a particular one for an event, but then again they were not what anyone would consider fashionable.

Sorush was allowed to read two more paragraphs before they heard the sounds of triumph from the bedroom, followed by more stomping footsteps. They were glad they were living on the floor just above the busy restaurant on the ground level. Those heavy motorcycle boots would be getting them complaints from anyone who lived below them for sure.

“This one,” Itza said, holding up the jacket and pointing at the design stitched into the back.

“‘Make love, not war’,” Sorush said, reading the words in bright red leather. “It’s a bit native, isn’t it? The making love thing. Or are you closer to the humans than I thought you were?”

“It’s a popular protest saying,” Itza said. “Don’t read into it too far.”

“I don’t mind, you know,” said Sorush, who did, deep down, very much mind. “You’re a free demon. If you want to get friendly with humans, it’s none of my business.”

“Hard pass,” Itza said, curling its lip. “If you ever see me macking on mortals, assume Hell’s got me at gunpoint.”

It slid the jacket it had been wearing off of its shoulders, (there was a painting of a black-and-red snake on the back of this one, silver studs along the shoulder seams, and a few pins along the lapels. A daily driver, as Itza would describe it,) and swung the new one on. It was new, Sorush could see now, no creases in the elbows or along the shoulder yoke, the marks of a well-loved piece of clothing. It was also plain, other than the words on the back, untouched by pins or studs or leather paints.

There was an old antique china cabinet with a mirrored back in Sorush’s dining room, its shelves lined not with dishes and silver serving spoons and delicate pink wine glasses, but dozens of display cases containing perfectly pinned butterflies and beetles of all shapes and sizes, arranged like artwork behind glass over decades by Sorush themself. Itza studied itself in the mirror, weaving its head to see around the specimens. “What do you think,” it called around the corner. “Leave it like this, or decorate it?”

“I think it wouldn’t be quite Alistair Lowrey if it didn’t at least have spikes on the shoulders and lapels, now would it?”

They could see Itza smiling from the corner of their eye, a little tingle of affection in their fingers. 

"Do you have a hammer?” it asked 

“No, you’ll have to get yours.”

There was a dramatically exasperated sigh, followed by a snap and the sharp smell of smoke, and soon Itza had spread itself out on a coffee table that wasn’t there moments before with half a craft store’s worth of accoutrements and a sketchbook. It had turned on the radio, the same one it had bought for Sorush in 1923, twisting the dial until it landed on something that sounded halfway interesting to listen to while working. Soon the apartment was quiet once more, at least for a moment, the only sounds other than the fuzzy, over-foleyed production of a radio drama were the slide of the pages between Sorush’s fingers, and the scratch of graphite on paper as Itza sketched out jacket designs.

They weren’t quite listening to the story unfolding through the airwaves until the woman narrating starting going off about how she had lost control of her life due to depression and drug use following the death of her husband in the war, and if it weren’t for some mission in Chicago to drag her back into God’s good graces, she probably would have killed herself.

“Load of shite this is,” Itza grumbled. “Nobody just goes to heroin because they woke up one morning thinking it was a good idea. They’re talking like it’s her fault she was depressed and she didn’t have a support group.”

“Well, considering the last decade we’ve been living through, I can see why they would word it like that,” Sorush said, leaning over to inspect Itza’s work. “There have been quite a few issues with the young ones becoming a danger to themselves and others.”

“It’s still not fair to blame someone for having messed-up brain chemistry. Humans are too brutal to one another.”

It allowed Sorush to slightly adjust the arrangement of studs across the lapel of the jacket, which it begrudgingly agreed was more aesthetically pleasing than their original placement. Finally, after a bit more tweaking, it brandished its pliers and awl and set to poking holes in the leather.

Its hands were swift and skilled, as they’d always been, operating with supernatural precision - punching holes in the leather, sliding the prongs through, and folding them with the pliers and the back of one knuckle. Over and over and over again until within minutes, one full lapel was now covered in shining silver pyramid studs. Sorush watched the whole process, captivated, their book forgotten for the moment. It always fascinated them to watch Itza work, on anything it decided to do.

The radio played on, detailing how the woman broke the shackles of her depression, (this announcement was presented with an additional dramatic organ riff, which triggered another crease of Itza’s nose,) and she had found her purpose in life for the first time since her husband’s death.

“Likely none of that would have happened if we weren’t in this blasted war to begin with,” Itza said, trading its awl for a bottle of paint, which it shook thoroughly.

Sorush tried not to look at the white marks on Itza’s fingers, the way its nails were painted black because they naturally grew in thin and misshapen from the years and years of abuse. They especially tried not to notice the bandage wrapped around the thumb on its right hand. But that’s where their eyes were drawn, as Itza spoke with unhidden vitriol about the war that even the humans thought was pointless, thousands of miles across the ocean.

It wasn’t counting now, but Sorush knew that on any other day the radio would have been changed the second the word “God” was mentioned. But now, today, it was just noise, something to drown out the screams that echoed in the back of its mind.

It would be easier to count the years in which there were no wars, when Itza was relaxed, calmed, its fingers still while they sat together on the couch, and it wasn’t at the stables running the colts until it passed out from the exertion. They’d hoped, both of them together, that the second World War would be the end, at least for a while, but nearly immediately after the Germans admitted defeat, America raised its hackles at Russia, and the conflicts hadn’t stopped.

After decades of dissonance the humans were exhausted. They put flowers in their hair and strummed guitars and sang while sitting on the steps of Congress, their soft, sad voices begging for reprieve. Please, for us. We’re tired of losing our fathers, our sons, our daughters who went into nursing to help heal the sick, not push rags into the mouths of soldiers with limbs blown off so their death screams did not wake those who slept fitfully outside, waiting their turn to die in the jungle. We have done what you said and we keep calm and carry on, not knowing when one of us will be chosen to fly to Vietnam, our bodies given as offering to Thánh Gióng for their trouble. Please, just give us this one. You can kill us all for money and oil some other day.

Hell would force it overseas eventually, once it was tired of Itza filling their inboxes with creatures, not soldiers, but for now it painted red stitches onto the sleeve of a jacket that it would wear in solidarity with humans as they stood in Central Park and prayed the nightmare did not continue for too long.

The radio changed to a talk show and Itza finally changed the station, the dulcet tones of Marvin Gaye filtering through the crackling speaker. It was a much nicer vibe (a word which the humans had recently started using, and Sorush finally understood.)

“I’ll probably be out most of the day,” Itza said absently, standing over the coffee table, studying its handiwork. It chewed on one nail for a moment before remembering that would chip the paint, and pushed the hand in its pants pocket instead. “Don’t wait up for me.”

“Alright,” Sorush said. Their words were neutral, but their heart was sad. Late nights were not good nights. Late nights meant that Itza would stumble home sometime within the next three days, unsure of how much time had passed since the last thing it remembered. The jacket had been left in Sorush’s bedroom, not because of any scandalous activity, but because the last time Sorush had seen Itza, it had appeared on their doorstep tripping so hard it saw through their humanoid vessel to the celestial form beneath. It woke up three days later with no memory of the previous week, and took another full day to get back on its feet.

There was no fear of a demon dying of poison, and even if someone were to point a gun in its face and actually pull the trigger, at worse Itza would be relegated to coiling up in a corner of one of Hell’s corridors until someone got around to finding it a new body to inhabit. The drugs and the alcohol and whatever else it was doing when Sorush wasn’t there weren’t what niggled at the back of the angel’s mind on those long, late nights.

“Would you mind if I came?” Sorush asked, sliding a bookmark between the pages of their book.

Itza paused, hands hovering over the tools on the table, mid-motion. Its eyes studied Sorush, trying to glean insight from the set of their brows, the width of their eyes.

“I’ve never been to a protest,” they said plainly. “I’d like to see what they’re about.”

“They’re  _ about _ trying to stop the wars,” Itza said, its words measured, tense. “You’ve seen them on TV.”

“Certainly, but you seem to care about them quite a bit, and I care about the things you care about.” Sorush watched Itza’s jaw tense, its unblinking eyes not leaving their face. “If you don’t want me to, I won’t-”

“No,” Itza snapped, seeming to surprise itself with the sharpness of the reply. “No, it’s fine. It’s less of a protest and more of a...existing in a space, so wear your comfortable shoes.”

“All of my shoes are comfortable. I can just choose not to feel pain.”

“You know what I mean.”

Itza pulled on its protest jacket, testing the quality of its work, the set of the paint, the tightness of the stitches. As its fingers touched the buttons they changed, from nickel-plated embossed with the brand name to silver stamped with skulls. The finishing touch to the clothing of a rebel.

“I’m heading home,” Itza announced, its keys appearing in its hand. “I’ll see you at lunch.”

The coffee table was spotless as Sorush heard the door locking down the hall, all traces of Itza cleaned up and put away, like nothing was ever there. It blew in on its whims like a hurricane and left nothing but its fingerprints behind, and Sorush sat in its wake, ears ringing at the silence they only seemed to notice whenever it had gone.

  
  
  
  


Itza’s throat itched as it drove back to SoHo, but it couldn’t smoke in the car, not if it wanted to sell it and actually make enough back to put a down payment on that new muscle car it had an eye on. It’d taken great care to keep the interior of its old Rolls Royce spotless (one may even call it  _ miraculous _ ,) over the years, and it wasn’t about to let one second of weakness ruin it. Itza’s magic could do many things, but removing nicotine from leather upholstery was apparently beyond its abilities.

It indulged itself on the walk from the parking lot to its apartment block, relishing not only in the calming effects but the dirty looks it garnered from the sharp-dressed businessmen it passed. SoHo was becoming trendy, and it was dragging in the capitalists looking to increase their wealth. They didn’t mesh well with the young artists and outcasts looking for places to call their own, or the demon on the fourth-floor balcony that watched them all and ensured they made it home safe every night.

Itza liked the kids buying up the apartments on its street, who looked at the world through glasses so different from the rest. The ones who left their houses in a sweater and slacks, and came home that night in a skirt and heels, giddy on those few fleeting moments to be who they truly were, before real life stole it away from them again. It had chased off more than one jagoff with ill intents from her doorstep, tails between their legs, spinning stories of some unspeakable horror in the Mercer Street alley that nobody would really believe, but they’d steer clear regardless.

It knew how they felt, to be outcast from society simply for existing as themselves. For loving who they loved. They didn’t know it, but those kids picked a good street to live on. The church may tell them that God found them abhorrent, but a demon’s protection was better even than Heaven’s, because a demon doesn’t give a shit about making sure it’s signed the right paperwork before it beats their ass into next Sunday.

It was itchy again by the time it made it indoors and into the shower, scrubbing the last day’s grime off of its skin (at least it hoped it was one one day’s worth. It had woken up on the floor this morning, missing about twelve hours’ worth of the previous day. Something that was happening more and more often, but until the world stopped trying to blow itself up and take Itza with it, it didn’t see it ending any time soon. There’s only so much death it can take at once, and America was hellbent on finding how much that was.)

It put a record on while it went through the routine of getting dressed, knowing full well it could snap a finger and change clothes instantaneously, but something about the mundaneness of having to thread its legs into its jeans and button up its shirt one button at a time was relaxing, in a way. Something to fill the space between breaths, something to do with its hands besides peel its own skin off. It chose the boots it had to tie up instead of the ones that zipped, because it took a few seconds longer to wrap the laces around its fingers and twist them into knots.

It took the train to the Upper West Side. It would have preferred to drive, to turn up the radio and scream along to the music to drown out the voices in its head, but it didn’t want its car associated with whatever was going to happen today in the park. It was lunchtime on a Sunday, and the subways were full, the murmur of soft voices just enough noise to distract Itza’s brain. It stood up in the centre aisle and watched the nothing outside the windows fly by, just a little faster than usual.

The train rattled into the 66th Street station, knocking Itza from its daydreams and back into real life. The speaker at the front of the car crackled to life to attempt to let everyone know where they were, but all that came out was garbled static. It didn’t matter. Itza knew every stop between its apartment and Sorush’s like the back of its hand, ingrained in its psyche deep as its own fake name. It took the stairs to the surface two at a time, bracing itself for the sudden shift from the dim, echoey station to the bright, roaring outdoors.

Sorush would probably be waiting for it at the coffee shop on the corner of their street, sat outside, a scarf wrapped tastefully around their neck, not because they were actually cold, but because the thermometer zip-tied to their balcony railing said it was forty degrees. It would probably be the same colour as Itza’s eyes and secured at their collar with a pin shaped like a snake. The tea would smell like a deep indigo - it was their favourite from that shop, they had it every time they went. Their eyes would light up when they saw it across the street, and Itza would watch them hastily remember that they couldn’t meet them halfway with the café’s cup in their hands. And Itza would tease them relentlessly about their clothing choices as they walked to Central Park, but it had painted angel wings in what the bottle said was gold on the shoulder of all of its jackets, so really it had no room to talk.

The seats outside of the coffee shop were all occupied, and none of them were Sorush, so Itza had to resort to its demonic abilities to locate them. It scanned the faces in the crowds, wishing it could tell the difference between blonde hair and silver, trying to breathe in through its mouth without looking like a weirdo. A full spectrum hit the back of its eyes, every colour of the rainbow and then some, smearing across Itza’s vision like after-images from a strobe light as people passed it by. No two humans were quite the same hue, which made Itza very, very good at telling twins apart.

“Alistair!” Came a voice (like, well, like angel’s song,) through the crowds from Itza’s right, the direction of the coffee shop. Itza turned, and there they were, stepping through the café door, holding the nearly-stolen mug, steam still drifting from the top, a little more purple than blue this time.

Demons have a built-in early warning system when it comes to the celestial - this kind of crawling feeling that prickles the hair on their arms whenever anything holy is nearby. It’s useful when one is attempting to avoid being smitten on sight, but much like other forms of pain, can be ignored if need be. And brains, even the brains piloting the bodies of supernatural creatures, are very prone to ignoring things they deem unimportant. A wailing siren isn’t as obtrusive when it’s been sounding for an hour. And a demon’s angelic heebie-jeebies all but disappear after a good thousand years or so of being in one’s constant presence.

It would very much have come in handy for finding Sorush that day, because when Itza looked up, it barely recognized them at all.

“Well you could say  _ something _ ,” Sorush said huffily, nearly sloshing all of their tea onto the pavement.

Itza was trying to comprehend its eyes. It squeezed them shut, and opened its mouth, just to make sure, but unfortunately the colour was right, the voice was right, even the level of warmth in the body was right, the only thing wrong was-

“I have waited a century to see you in something other than a Victorian suit,” Itza said. “But I expected something… sensible. Not… _ that _ .”

It was one of the few moments in life in which Itza was glad it was colourblind. If it could actually see how bright those grayscale swirls were, it might trigger a migraine. Sorush was standing there with tea in their hand, dressed in jeans and a tie-dye shirt, sunglasses that Itza was pretty sure were pink or orange or some other god-awful hue perched on top of their head, ready to be snapped down when necessary.

“You said to dress comfortably.”

“Comfortable for you is like, a velvet waistcoat and slightly looser slacks, not jeans and a t-shirt.” Itza was trying not to look at them. It wasn’t exactly flustered by the sight of Sorush’s upper arms, which it hadn’t seen since the 1500s, but there definitely was something making its heart rate speed up about the extra exposed skin.

“I wanted to blend in.”

“Since when do you want to blend in?”

“Since it was important to you that I did.”

Itza looked then, at the sunglasses on their head (hair still styled the same way, not a strand out of place, pushed back away from their face,) at the gold ring on their hand (a new one, from a new college, every so many years they had to get a new doctorate to keep the suspicions low,) at their jeans with the frayed hems, just above their usual wingtip shoes.

“I don’t care if you blend in, angel,” it said.

“I can tell when you’re lying, you know. You’ve spent quite a large amount of our time together caring that we blend in. One of the first things you ever told me was that I needed to blend in.”

“I just didn't want you to get hurt by something you weren’t aware of. It’s different now, people aren’t so inclined to decapitate anyone who stands out a little.”

“I kn ow. And I’m grateful.” Sorush sipped their tea, still warm. The café hadn’t realized they’d walked off with it, yet. “You may completely disregard my personal preferences much of the time, but I also will admit that I get stuck in my ways.”

There was a shadow over Sorush’s face that Itza only noticed when it lifted in that moment. “I saw this in a charity shop and thought it might be fun to change it up. Going to a war protest for the first time seemed a good enough opportunity to see how I like modern fashion.”

“Yeah? And how’s it treating you?”

“Not nearly enough pockets. Where do you put anything? Especially you, with those tight women’s jeans you wear so much now.”

Itza laughed, the tension falling from its shoulders. “That’s why they all wear purses,” it said. “I keep my keys in another dimension.”

They had walked a full block before Sorush realized they still had the mug in their hands, and it was sent back to the kitchens with a wave of their hands and a quick apology to the sky. 

  
  
  
  


“Well, that was...exciting.”

Emergency lights reflected off of Sorush’s sunglasses, still perched atop their head. It was dark now, the smell of bonfire and cigarette smoke clinging to their clothes, mingling with the heady scent of incense. Itza’s nocturnal eyes watched the shimmering shapes of humans dispersing, high on peace and love and ecstasy and probably so much more. Some of them were leaving on their own, some were being led, a few with cuffs around their wrists.

Around Sorush’s neck was a pink plastic lei, and Itza had accepted a now-wilted flower crown from a very drunk girl with jet-black hair that smelled like the colour of the sky. She was one of the ones who left early, before the police showed up, before the formerly peaceful gathering of humans turned savage, and Itza and Sorush decided to bail.

“It gets like that occasionally,” Itza said, following a certain girl’s path from the grass to the sidewalk with its eyes, her hand raised to call a cab. “When the police show up you know it’s going to shit.”

“Well, that one lad did climb on top of a bonfire,” Sorush said, reaching for something in their jacket and finding it to not be there.

Itza shrugged. “He knew the risks.”

“He was probably on drugs!” Sorush slapped the other side of their chest, frowning when their jacket was still not on their body. “I do hope he’ll be okay.”

“He’ll live,” Itza said, begrudgingly. “Though if he died, I could have claimed him. The more I can claim here the less likely it is I’ll have to go to Vietnam.”

Sorush waved their hand, their jacket appearing with a “pop”, draped neatly over their arm. “Is that why you attend these things so regularly? So you do not have to go to Vietnam?”

“I don’t kill people at protests,” Itza said. “I go to protests so they’ll  _ stop _ dying.”

“But if someone does die, you’re taking responsibility for that.”

Itza reached up and plucked the flower crown from its head, rubbing one of the petals between its fingers. “I can’t handle another Germany. Head office hasn’t said anything about shipping me over yet, but I’m on thin ice after last time. I can’t fuck off and ignore orders again, or they’re gonna drag me down and never let me back up.”

“So you’re picketing with humans?”

“I might not pay taxes but I am a body with a voice. Might as well use it.”

“How honourable of you,” Sorush said. They produced a fob watch from their jacket pocket and held it out to Itza. “Time?”

“Seven thirty. Did you really teleport your jacket here to make me check the time? You know you could have just waited until we passed a bank or something.”

“This one is blessed,” Sorush explained, turning the watch over in their hand, running a finger over the embossing of an Ophanim’s wheels on the back. “It’s always perfectly accurate, no matter the time zone.”

“Oh, of course, how silly of me,” Itza said, mockingly. “I’m sure the humans with their little wind-up toys will appreciate your punctuality.”

Sorush pulled the jacket on over their t-shirt, buttoning it up and fastening the fob watch at their waist. They gave an almost imperceptible sigh, their shoulders held not quite so high.

Itza could see their pulse slow, the halo surrounding their body less hot, less white. “So, not so big on modern fashion, then.”

They held their hands out in front of them, studying them in the dark. “I’m afraid not.”

“I’ll be honest,” Itza said. “If you had actually decided to join the modern era, I’d have probably discorporated out of shock.”

“Is it really so unimaginable, that I could be hip and with the times?”

Itza choked, forcing Sorush to clap it on the back repeatedly until it caught its breath. “Please, angel, for the love of God, never say that again.”

“Why not? Too groovy for you?”

“Please,” Itza wheezed.

Sorush’s hands lingered on Itza’s arm as they steadied it on its feet. “I’ve never been good at blending in,” they said. “No matter how hard I try, everything about me is always a little bit off. The eyes, the accent, the taste in clothes; I think I’ve really just given up trying to get it right.”

“I think you’re fine, angel,” Itza said. “Just like you are. I really don’t need you to blend in for me anymore.”

The hand on its arm tightened. “I really do think you do.”

“I don’t-” Itza started, then stopped. This wasn’t about clothes, or accents, or whether or not their eyes shone like a cat’s in the beam of a flashlight. “If one of us gets killed in a hate crime, we don’t know if they’ll let either of us come back. I can’t lose you again, Sorush. Not yet.”

The angel sighed. “I know.”

  
  


\---

  
  
  


A shot glass shattered a mirror in a bar in the Village a few months later, sparking a new kind of protest that Itza felt deep in its bones. Those girls who hid themselves until the night suddenly wore their hair down in the daylight and held signs over their heads and shouted for their right to exist, the boys with fingers intertwined raised their free fists in defiance of the police who tried to snap cuffs around them. The kids who Itza had watched over for years were showing themselves as they were at last, even though the threat of arrest, of violence, of death, was still as real as it'd always been.

The ones who lived in fear were now emboldened, pushing back against the laws that had suppressed them for so long. They pinned buttons to their shirts that Sorush said were the colours of the rainbow as they stood in front of City Hall and sang their anthems, founded organizations in their names and took their pleas to court.

In 1970 they stitched together a flag and raised their voices to the sky on the streets of the Village. It spread like wildfire through New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington D.C., and further, and for the first time in a long, long time, the world started to see them for who they were: humans.

  
  
  
  


There was a play at Gramercy Theatre and Itza had tickets (perfectly legal ones, for once, but it wouldn’t tell Sorush that.) It stayed up all night the night before, fighting its television’s rabbit-ears to pick up a channel that was still on air, something to provide entertainment as it bent over its coffee table, needle in hand. It laid its meticulously labeled embroidery threads across the coffee table and stitched a carnation into the cuff of its coat, a perfect recreation of the live one in a vase in front of them, the leaves the same shade of gray as the bloom above them.

There was snow on the ground, and Itza was thankful that modern tires enabled vehicles to drive in it now. The subways never stopped, of course, but this was a special occasion. This required style. This required a car.  _ This  _ required a black Shelby fastback. 

After all, you can’t pick up someone for your first official date in nearly six thousand years on the red line train.


	13. 2005

“I can’t believe you still have this,” Itza said, sneering as it held up a pale fur coat, still pristine as the day it was constructed.

“I like that coat,” Sorush said, plucking the garment from Itza’s hands. “You made it for me. It’s special.”

Itza picked up a stack of embroidered waistcoats. “Yeah, it’s  _ also _ grossly out of style.”

“ _ Everything _ I wear is out of style, we’ve been over this. I like the way I dress. It’s comfortable, and there’s plenty of pockets to put all of my things. You remember the sixties; we both agreed that it was weird.”

“Don’t remind me,” Itza cringed, handing them a stack of trousers next. “But they still make fur coats these days, they’re just...y’know. A more modern style. We could get you one that was actually made in the last millennium.”

Sorush accepted the waistcoats and set them into the box. “It wouldn’t have been handmade by my favourite demon,” they said.

Itza scowled at the remaining contents of Sorush’s closet. “At least you wouldn’t look old,” it mumbled.

“If you made me another, I would consider it.”

Sorush smiled to themself at the colour rising on Itza’s face and set the clothes in their arms lovingly into the box at their knees. Itza dumped another two on top, then closed the box up, taping it shut. 

“I don’t know why we have to do this manually,” it said, hefting a large moving box into its arms and carrying it to the living room. “Can’t you imagine all your shit in boxes to save us the trouble?”  
“Can’t miracle things I don’t remember owning. I’ve got far too many belongings, I need to cull some of it down and this is a good way to do it.”

Itza stood in the middle of Sorush’s absolutely  _ Spartan  _ apartment, holding their box of clothes, an incredulous look on its face. Not breaking eye contact, it set the box on top of the only other items in the room besides the coat rack, the couch, and Sorush’s sitting chair: the other two boxes they’d already packed up.

Sorush huffed. “Well, it’s a lot for me, anyway! I spent most of my life in England wandering around and spending the night in parks if I didn’t have business in my office.”

“Oh my God Sorush, you slept in  _ parks _ ?”

“I never had a reason to settle down,” they said. “And it’s not like I sleep. So I would go collecting at night.”

“How did you not get arrested…”

“I may or may not have had to make a few security guards and policemen forget what they were doing for five minutes or so.”

Sorush didn’t miss the way Itza’s eyes dilated in the bright, sunlit room, or the flash of warmth that settled in their chest. “You  _ bastard _ ,” it said.

One more box handled the rest of Sorush’s clothes, another the meager amount of dishes they kept in their cabinets (it was really just a kettle and a set of mugs for when Itza wanted tea; it’s not like they cooked or even ate anything on a daily basis.) It took less than two hours to pack up everything except the coat rack, the couch, and the chair into the back of Itza’s car.

“I still prefer the Rolls Royce,” Sorush said, sliding in the passenger seat of the glittering black Mustang. “It was timeless.”

“It was nice, but this one’s way cooler,” Itza said, turning the key in the ignition. The now-classic Mustang roared to life like a vengeful beast awakened from slumber. “Can’t get that from a car made in the ‘20s.”

Sorush settled into the seat, cradling a particularly sentimental fern in their lap. “No, but you could have picked something with more storage space.”

“That’s what finger guns are for, angel, for making storage space.”

“Can’t you use your, er, finger guns,” Sorush made a face at the term. “To miracle my furniture into your apartment, instead of making the trunk of your car into the TARDIS?”

“Not unless you want your clothes sewn out of fabric created in the depths of Hell itself,” Itza said, its foot heavy on the accelerator. “Besides, even if I could, simply snapping all your boxes into my apartment isn’t _ fun _ . Sometimes I wanna feel the breeze and hear the sound of the engine purring, y’know?”

“Ah,” said Sorush. “It’s the vibes again, isn’t it?”

Itza flashed them a grin. “Exactly! You’re finally getting it.”

The city was lit up in lights for the holidays, the neon cacophony flying past the windows as Itza wove through the late-evening traffic, somehow never needing to stop for red lights. It hadn’t snowed yet, but Itza had said it smelled it on the air, and the demon and its senses had never been wrong, not in nearly six thousand years. They wouldn’t have to put this car on blocks, though, just park it in the lot and maybe pour water over it in the morning. Or snap their fingers and turn ice to steam, whichever felt right.

The apartment had been redone recently - the landlord was very keen on keeping his buildings as trendy as the borough itself tried to be - and there was no wallpaper to speak of anymore, just dark paint and white granite countertops. The landlords knocked out some walls, too, opening up the space, keeping it from feeling too much like a cave. Some of the original brick walls were left exposed in the living room, which Sorush figured was very stylish.

It’d been Itza’s idea to combine their living situations. “It’s more efficient,” it said, nervously spinning one of its many rings around its finger. “No sense in you getting your own apartment somewhere when your new university is just in NoHo. So, y’know. There’s room for you. If you like.”

“Are you sure?”

It looked out of a nearby window at the street below, its jaw tense, like the words it wanted to say were taking a lot of effort to push out. “We’ve been doing this whole...human relationship thing a few decades now, and we’re still not dead. It seems the world is changing for the better, finally. It’s not quite so dangerous to be...this. Whatever it is.”

“If you think you have room for me,” Sorush finally said, “Then I’d be honoured to add my name to your lease.”

Itza scowled behind its sunglasses, but its face was turning red. “You are the most romantic entity I have ever met in my life,” it grumbled. “Add your name to my lease, who the fuck says that?”

“Would you rather me wax poetic about sharing your heart and home?”

The colour in the demon’s face deepened. “Please spare me.”

They decided later that Sorush’s couch was more comfortable than Itza’s, but the sitting chair didn’t match the rest of the decor, so when Sorush snapped the furniture into place, the chair ended up sitting on the doorstep of the local thrift store’s donation center instead. The coat rack came, though, despite coat racks being grossly out of style, because Sorush still liked to use it. And, of course, the fern. It took a place of honour on the writing-desk in the bedroom, which was prime sunbeam real estate.

“I’ll buy you a new chair,” Itza said, when Sorush expressed annoyance at it putting its feet in their lap as they lounged on the couch to watch Doctor Who (there was no cable box with which to catch the BBC, or _ any _ channel for that matter, but they never gave much mind to such things as “cable subscriptions” and “it being physically impossible to catch a British television channel from Manhattan”,) after unpacking all four boxes of Sorush’s things.

“It would work if you would just sit on furniture like a normal person.”

“S’not comfortable. I like to spread out, stretch my legs.”

“I thought snakes were all about coiling up and hiding in little holes.”

“Yeah, sure, when we’re  _ asleep _ . Otherwise we wanna slither around and feel the sun on our scales.”

Sorush sipped green tea (green to the eye, and green to the tongue,) from one of Itza’s teacups that it’d bought in 1865, only half paying attention to the television. “Do you ever turn into one? A snake, I mean.”

“Nah, not really. I mean, I _ can _ , but it’s inconvenient at best. Can’t talk, for one. No legs. Humans don’t appreciate it when you get hungry and slither in for dinner at a restaurant.”

“I can see how that would be a problem,” Sorush said, amused. They could only imagine the mayhem that must have caused, if it actually happened at all.

The scene felt comfortable but Itza was so hyper-aware of every one of Sorush’s movements, them existing in its space. They’d been doing this for centuries, lounging in Itza’s apartment with alcohol and some form of entertainment to fill the air, but this was the first time one of them wouldn’t be leaving at the end of the night. Instead Sorush would pull out some container of dead things to work on, and Itza would go faceplant in its bed and try to sleep and fail, tossing and turning beneath its damask print duvet.

  
  
  


Coming to consciousness was slow and reluctant, the fingers of Itza’s brain clinging to the doorframe of sleep, leaving claw marks in the wood. The sunlight was not quite in its eyes yet, streaming down in lines from between the wood-slat blinds, a slight shimmer to the beams that told Itza the sky was clear and the sun warm, at least for now. It yawned and the world lit up then, the smell of its bedding, its skin, the dust in the corners, the fern on the writing-desk, blue and green and red and gold-

Itza’s eyes snapped open, then, its heart quite literally stopping, just for a second.

It liked to collect things that appealed to its tongue, if not necessarily its eyes. Every piece of decor in its home was chosen for aesthetics but also for the colours it conjured in Itza’s brain, which presented itself as a congruent, but eclectic collection of items. There really was no reason why it had three almost identical stag shoulder mounts except that they were all the same colour in its mind, and that was a rare thing to find. All plants tasted like green (surprisingly, considering other usually colour-coded things like mustard, tasted completely different colours than they looked,) but it was partial to a specific shade, which all of its plants happened to be. It’s how they chose the curtains, too, and why they never matched the wallpaper.

But there was one colour it never kept in the house, not because it clashed, not because it disliked it, but because that was the colour of a certain useless angel, and seeing it every day would make the demon ache in ways it wasn’t ready to accept.

_ Until now _ , it thought, sitting up and kicking off the duvet. The deep maroon smell of some new tea Sorush had bought wafted underneath the door, mingling with the stale gold from where they’d stood in the room last night, hanging clothing in the armoire. It wondered what their morning routine was, if they had rituals like some humans do. Coffee, tea, a good book, or listening to the birds sing. No birds but pigeons here in SoHo, but maybe it was nice to watch the city wake up on the streets below. Itza didn’t have a routine, it just woke up whenever, pulled its clothes on, styled its elaborately spiked hair by hand, and went about its day.

“Good morning, sunshine,” said Sorush, beaming pleasantly in Itza’s direction when it emerged from its room, resplendent in the usual fitted band t-shirt and jeans that looked as though it had been attacked by some large predator. “I made tea.”

“I smelled it,” Itza said, plodding casually towards the kitchen, trying to ignore the sheer amount of things that now tasted like Sorush. The apartment looked like the Taj Mahal behind the demon’s eyes.

The tea tasted pleasant (and taste here is used in the traditional sense,) and Itza sipped it slowly as Sorush excitedly pointed out every change they’d made in the apartment while Itza was sleeping. A display of butterflies that Itza was certain was spectacular when seen in colour was now affixed to the wall next to the pheasant mount (Itza complained that the colours didn’t match, so it was replaced with a different, but more visually coherent, case of butterflies,) the couch had been scooted back a few feet, and there was now a new coffee table between it and the TV, on which Sorush had set the cottontail rabbit mount and a stack of entomology tomes that Itza suspected had come from the new floor-to-ceiling bookshelf that now stood next to Itza’s own along one wall.

“I hope you did this magically, and I’m not about to get an angry call from the downstairs neighbours about all the noise you made moving furniture,” Itza said.

Sorush stared at it, paused mid-motion while setting a glass case of something on the bookshelf. “Of course,” they said with feigned casualness.

“Mmhm,” hummed Itza disbelievingly, and flopped down on the couch.

“How did you sleep?” Sorush asked, achingly domestic.

“Awful.”

“I’m sorry, is it because of me?”

Itza made a noncommittal sound. “Not used to someone else in my house. I’ll get over it.”

Sorush continued to totter around, rearranging Itza’s belongings to fit theirs in alongside them. Little flecks of gold leaf amongst the carefully crafted colourscape that Itza had been comfortable in for decades, disrupting what had once been familiar and safe. It started talking about nothing just to watch them leave handprints on its life, more physical and real now than they’d ever been.

By the end of the week Itza wouldn’t be able to discern where “it” started and “they” began, the sight and the taste of everything blending together into simply “them, together.”

“What does snow smell like to you?” Sorush had asked Itza once, a few years before. They were standing on the balcony of Itza’s apartment together, watching the traffic below while Itza indulged in its nicotine habit.

Itza cleared the smoke from its lungs and opened its mouth. Its teeth flashed in the sunlight, sharp and white. “Like a kind of clear blue,” it said finally. “Like rain, but more...sparkly, I guess.”

“Usually one _ sees _ colours,” Sorush said. “I’m not sure I could imagine what blue tastes like.”

“I can’t see any colours anymore,” the demon replied, almost sadly. “But this body has a defect or something, and I can taste them, somehow. It’s like, behind my eyes, in my head. Like an overlay. I don’t think the colours are what they’re supposed to be, though. I’m pretty sure all tea is brown, right? Your brand tastes orange, and chai is usually a kind of pinkish red. Mustard tastes purple, but it’s actually yellow, that sort of thing.”

“It sounds lovely.”

“It can be.”

It learned that Sorush liked to watch the sun rise in the morning, a certain spot just in the corner of their (not Itza’s, not Sorush’s,  _ their, _ ) balcony lending a spectacular view through the skyscrapers. The first time it woke up early enough to join them, the angel described the colours in vivid detail while Itza stood next to them, and it could almost,  _ almost _ see them for real.

  
  
  
  


**2012**

  
  


Beijing was stellar this time of year. Not too cold, not a sniff of rain, the city alive and absolutely bustling with activity. Itza walked behind Sorush, hands in its pockets as they wove their way through the throngs of both tourists and residents congregating on Guanganmen street for dinner. The smell of Sichuan spices were heavy in the air, filling Itza’s head with a rainbow of spices, herbs, oil, and meat.

“I didn’t think you liked spicy food, angel,” it said, sliding up next to Sorush as they stopped at a mapo doufu stall.

“Lately I seem to have developed a tolerance for hot things,” Sorush said, giving Itza a sly look. “I didn’t think it would be my first choice back in Brazil all those years ago, but it’s grown on me since then.”

“Your flattery is not working here,” Itza muttered, reaching into its jacket and pulling the appropriate amount of yuan from thin air and handing it over to the cook with a forced smile.

The mapo doufu was scooped swiftly from the wok into a plastic container to be handed across the counter to Sorush’s waiting hands. They thanked the cook in Cantonese (neither of them had been in Sichuan proper long enough to pick up the local dialect,) and they and Itza wandered back through the market together. A pair of chopsticks materialized in Itza’s hand and it helped itself to Sorush’s food, popping hot oil-soaked beef into its mouth dramatically.

“Not as spicy as I’d expect,” Sorush said, chewing thoughtfully. “But good.”

Itza declared it fine before moving to the next stall, which offered tea-roasted duck. “It’s because you’re foreign,” it said, handing over more demonically conjured money. “They won’t give you the real hot stuff unless you ask.”

The duck was cooked perfectly, and Itza dipped it into Sorush’s hot oil for an extra kick, much to the chagrin of everyone who noticed.

“I’ll let you buy the tripe, then,” Sorush said, pointing towards a stall down the path.

“Why do I have to buy tripe? I don’t even like tripe. Tastes like the way carnivore guts smell and so chewy every time I eat it my jawline gets sharp enough to cut paper.”

Sorush snatched a slice of duck from Itza’s plate. “You’re better at wheeling and dealing,” they said.

“True,” said Itza, allowing itself to be nudged towards a stall selling fried squid on a stick. “I’ll buy the food if it makes you happy.”

The squids on a stick tided the angel over until the two of them had wandered along to the tripe stall, skillfully avoiding the dozens of other delicious-looking (and smelling,) offerings along the way. There was only so much room for Chinese delicacies, and they had to pace themselves. They may be supernatural, but the bodies they lived in were decidedly human, at least in the stomach capacity area.

“I’m just saying,” Itza said, leaning against the stall while they waited for the cook to whip up a fresh batch of  fuqi fèipiàn . “Beijing is probably not the best place to see the eclipse. Too many city lights. We need to go out to the mountains or something, somewhere there’s no lights.”

“Lights have little to do with how well you see the moon,” Sorush said. “I want to sit somewhere comfortable, and the tops of mountains aren’t comfortable.”

“They’re less crowded though,” Itza grumbled, leaning against the wall of the stall to avoid being hit by a passerby’s giant purse.

“That is true,” Sorush said sweetly, nodding their thanks to the cook as she finally handed over the food. They paid her with money from Itza’s coat and the two of them moved away, bearing away from the center of the market, toward less populated streets.

“I don’t want to be dodging purses while I’m attempting to enjoy the beauty of nature,” Itza said, ducking this time away from the grasping hands of a child perched on its father’s shoulders.

“Shush, you,” Sorush said. “We’re going to a park, a nice park, and it won’t be too crowded, promise.”

“How is a park in the middle of Beijing a better place to watch the eclipse than on top of a mou-”

“The moon,” said a voice to Itza’s right. “The moon will turn to blood before the day of the Lord.”

The woman looked ordinary enough, dressed in an open jacket and boots, her shoulder-length hair peeking out from beneath her beanie, streaked in gray. She had a little cat charm hanging from her cell phone, and a cheap gold-plated cross around her neck.

Itza tried not to curl its lip. “Yeah, alright,” it said, stepping around her, pressing itself into Sorush’s arm.

“The end times are coming and this eclipse is a sign,” the woman said, shaking her head. “The earthquakes, the wars, and now the fearful sights in the heavens.”

“Listen, ma’am, we’re really just trying to get some food-”

The woman grabbed the sleeve of Itza’s jacket, her bony fingers digging into its arm with surprising strength. It was held in place by her, frozen to the spot, the hair on the back of its neck prickling as she stared up into its eyes, wide in the dim light of the market.

“You can feel it,” she said, “The end of the world.”

Sorush, who had kept on walking, realized now that Itza wasn’t beside them, and turned around now, pushing their way back through the crowd. “Is everything okay?”  
The woman released Itza’s arm. “May God have mercy on your soul,” she whispered, and disappeared into the throng of people that filled the market.

Itza rubbed the spot where the woman’s nails had dug into its skin through its sleeve. “Your people are fucking crazy, angel,” it said, shaking its arm off like a cat with wet paws. “It’s like half of them are stuck in the middle ages. Someone needs to explain natural astronomical phenomena and climate change to them.”

Sorush’s eyes followed the woman’s beanie through the street. “Yes,” they said, absently, brows slightly knit.

“A lunar eclipse isn’t a sign of the end times,” Itza continued, grimacing. “There’s been millions, since the beginning of time, and the world’s not even close to ending.”

Sorush looked up into the empty darkness for stars that weren’t visible, eaten by the city lights. “Yes,” they said again, quietly. “Of course.

You would think, being an angel and all, that Sorush would spend more time around the Christians. After all, their God was the same. But Sorush is not very social, and when they do make their way out of their apartment and into the presence of others, they would much rather hang out with their entomology colleagues, or Itza, neither of which have ever been particularly religiously minded.

Sorush had no real opinion of any earth religion. Contrary to popular belief, the angels didn’t really care about what the humans believed; it wasn’t their business, it was God’s. The angels were just there to keep the planets spinning in the right direction, and the occasional minor miracle to keep the humans from going completely feral and building another golden calf or leaping into volcanoes en masse. Most of Sorush’s interactions with religious folk involved humans standing on the street corners, handing out tracts or offering Bible studies, which amused Itza to no end.

“It’s probably because you’re always standing next to me,” Sorush said, after a few moments.

“Oh, sure, blame it on the demon,” quipped Itza.

“Well, you do look…” Sorush waved a hand in Itza’s general direction. “Goth.”

“In other words: not someone you’d see in a church.”

“Not exactly, no. Unless I guess, it was a Satanist church. Or Protestants that were _ very  _ loose on how they expect everyone to dress.”

Itza held out its hands, inviting Sorush to look at it, all of it. “What, you don’t think they’d let me attend midweek services wearing this?”

“There’s quite a lot of extraneous chain on your very tight leather pants, dear. I really do not think they’d let you within fifteen feet of a church, much less inside of one.”

Itza dropped its hands to its side. “Not breaking my heart, really. Walking into a church feels like throwing myself into a nuclear reactor. Besides, human religion sounds boring anyway. All that chanting and getting yelled at by old dudes. If I wanted that I’d just take the train to Brooklyn.”

The setting of the sun brought the crowds in force, the market filling rapidly with hungry salarymen and college students alike, looking for cheap, delicious food before heading out to the bars, or the country, to see the moon. Manoeuvering was difficult, the press of bodies in such a small space becoming increasingly claustrophobic. Sorush was slightly taller, but Itza had the advantage of being able to differentiate things better in dim light, so it took the lead through the throng, fingers twined with Sorush’s as they hit the last couple of stalls to satisfy their appetites and got the fuck out of Guanganmen street.

“It’s just strange,” Sorush said, settling down cross-legged on a brightly-coloured, handmade quilt that they definitely did not have several minutes ago. “Even before we came here, I kept hearing chatter on the streets about the end of the world coming.”

Itza flopped unceremoniously across from them, kicking dirt and overly-manicured park grass onto the quilt. “If you would use the internet every now and then, maybe you’d know.”

Sorush gave the demon a stern look. “That’s what I have you for. To tell me the interesting news.” A bottle of miju appeared in their hand, and they poured some for Itza before filling their own cup. “So I’m wondering why I haven’t heard about this.”

Itza tasted the miju tentatively, found it acceptable, and proceeded to tuck into the rest of its dinner. “Didn’t think it was important. It’s all just nonsense about the Mayan calendar or something like that.”

Sorush glared at it. “ _ What  _ about the Mayan calendar.”

“Aw, it’s all bollocks about a new age predicted on a rock or something; it’s just like saying the year 2000 was a new millennium. The humans are reading far too into it. It’s literally nothing.”

“You say that, but they  _ have  _ gotten a few things right over the years.”

Itza set its food down onto the picnic blanket, eyes on Sorush’s face. “The man standing on the street corner proclaiming the end of the world is so common it’s a movie cliché. What is it about this one that’s got you so worked up?”

The little line between Sorush’s eyebrows deepened, ever so slightly. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s the moon, maybe it’s the wars, maybe it’s just that we’ve been here for so long. Six thousand years and we’re  _ still here _ , waiting for the end of the world.”

“Is that so bad?” Itza asked. “To be here, together, in Beijing, eating a picnic of Chinese street food in a park while we wait for the moon to fall behind the Earth’s shadow?”

Sorush looked up at the sky, the first slivers of red beginning to appear around the moon’s edge, right around the tips of the rabbit’s ears. “It just feels like this would all have been over and done by now, is all.”

Itza gave them a lopsided smile. “That eager to get rid of me, eh?”

“I’m not,” Sorush said, softly. “And that is my entire concern.”

  
  
  
  


The moon rose above the city buildings, the sun already well on its way around the other side of the planet, the light bending around it at just the right angle to cast the moon in an eerie orange glow. All around them, the humans oohed and ahhed, children pointing at the sky with excited eyes, while parents explained the phenomenon in simple, easy to understand terms. Some had telescopes for better views, pressing both their eyes and the lenses of cameras into the eyepieces, committing the moment to memory, both physical and digital.

The moon didn’t seem to change much to Itza, maybe got a little dimmer, but Sorush assured them it was beautiful. The colour of strong spiced tea, they said, of Pantone 716C. Itza had no reference for what these even looked like; spiced tea could be any colour of the rainbow, depending on what spices they used. Pantone 716C was just a number it memorized, looked up on its computer every time it needed to know what colour something was, so it didn’t paint its walls bright yellow (again.) Sorush had described it once, though, as a kind of desaturated orange-red. Not as orange as a pumpkin was supposed to be, not as red as its hair. Possibly the colour that a certain type of fried dough covered in confectioner’s sugar was to the false eyes inside its mind. But it would never know for sure.

Sorush was quiet during the event, their thoughts a thousand miles away, or more. They stared up at the sky until long after the vague shadow covered the moon’s surface and most of the humans left, all except the photographers, eager to capture the entire time-lapse.

“Do you ever hear them?” Sorush asked softly, once they were nearly alone in the dark. “The singing.”

“All I hear are dead people,” Itza said. “Always, like white noise. When they aren’t screaming, anyway.”

Sorush’s eyes were still on the sky. “Do you remember being an angel?”

Itza grimaced. “Look, we’ve only been properly together for a few years so there’s never been a reason to have this conversation, but it’s incredibly rude to ask a demon if they remember being an angel, you know? It’s like...like a dead name. You can’t just ask someone what their dead name is.”

“I’m only asking because it’s you,” Sorush said. “Do you remember the singing?”

Itza closed its eyes. The singing, the singing. The choirs of Heaven it was never invited to, filling the sky above with muffled sound, like standing outside of the amphitheatre during a concert. It used to close its eyes and sing along, a single voice, adrift in the wind, alone down there on the Earth. It never saw the splendor of the Seraphim, of the Cherubs, of the Archangels, as they bathed in God’s warm light and sang their praises to Her, the love overflowing from every molecule of their bodies. Back when it could still see the colour of the sky, the way the sun shone through the clouds as it set, pink and blue and gold.

Its voice was quiet. “I remember the singing. But I can’t hear it anymore.”

Sorush’s was quieter. “Neither can I.”

  
  
  


“They’re cultists, Sorush,” Gabriel said sourly, his uninterested face hovering in the communication light just above our titular angel’s head. “The only thing they’ve got right about anything is that God isn’t a man.”

“There’s been other chatter, in America, too,” Sorush said, twisting their ring around their finger. “About December. The Mayans, and all. The humans seem very convinced.”

“And? Every century or so someone’s coming up with a doomsday theory. Come on Sorush, you’re an angel, you know better than this.”

“Yes, but  _ I’m _ actually down here, and I’ve seen the news. This time there  _ are  _ more earthquakes and freak storms and more wars going on at once than there’s ever been before. For lack of a better phrase, the stars seem to be aligning.”

They were standing in the center of the hotel suite, back to the door. Behind the light of the magic circle, floor-length sheer curtains concealed the dark shape of Itza, smoking out on the balcony, shoulders hunched pensively, silhouetted in the neon city lights.

Sorush let their eyes linger on Itza’s back for several moments. “I just want to know if I need to be getting ready for something.”

“You should always be ready,” Gabriel said. “‘ But of that day and hour knoweth no man.’”

“‘Not even the angels of heaven’,” Sorush mumbled. “I know.”

“Besides,” Gabriel said, giving Sorush a cold smile. “If it were me, I would wait until all the preppers have relaxed, just to piss ‘em all off.”

“Of course,” they said. “Keep them on their toes.”

“Now you’re thinking,” Gabriel said. “But I’m not God, last I checked. So I guess we’ll just have to wait and see, now won’t we?”

“I suppose we will.”

“Steady on course, Sorush. Armageddon will be here before you know it, and we can all rejoice in our work being over.”

Gabriel hung up and the lights went dark as Itza slid open the balcony door, pushing aside the curtains like something from a dream. The multicoloured light caught its hair from behind, like fire brushing its shoulders, the smell of smoke on its heels.

“You had to make sure,” it said, looking down at the candles on the floor.

“I needed to know-”

“If you needed to come up with a contingency plan.” Itza met their eyes. “For me.”

“One day-”

“I know,” Itza said, quietly. “One day they’re going to make us take up arms and fight each other, and we’re not going to get out of it.”

Sorush looked down at the floor. At the sigils drawn in chalk, to be miracled away before housekeeping saw them, so no-one would ask questions.

“It’s very Romeo and Juliet,” Itza continued, flopping down onto the still-made bed, crossing one leg over the other. “Two star-crossed lovers on opposite sides of a war. If only the bard knew he was writing real life.”

“I have no intentions of killing myself.”

“Didn’t say you would be playing Juliet.”

Sorush’s voice was tight. “I would rather you not kill yourself either, you know.”

“No, but if one of us had to,” Itza said, shrugging. “Can’t say I wouldn’t enjoy not having to deal with Hell anymore.”

“Stop talking like that,” Sorush snapped. “Dying is not the answer to anything.”

“It’s the answer to not having to fight in Heaven’s war. Discorporation only gets you stuck in paperwork hell for a week or so. I’m guessing Armageddon will take a fortnight at least. One week for the seals, another for the whole...Antichrist debacle. The sun going out and all that. Locusts with people heads. You want out for real-” Itza snapped its fingers, conjuring fire in its hand. “Well. You’re not Juliet. So I guess it’d be you making me a stiff drink, instead.”

“I’m not making you holy water so you can kill yourself, Itza.”

“Not yet you’re not.”

Sorush’s eyes flashed gold, the smell of copper filling the room. “We are not one of Shakespeare’s tragedies,” they growled, their voice lined in something thicker than human language.

Itza could see the place in space behind them where their wings were threatening to come into view, no doubt teeming with more glowing eyes to judge it alongside the ones on their face. 

“I’m just saying.”

“ _ Don’t _ .”

Itza huffed, turning toward the window again, toward the softened neon lights outside. This city wasn’t so unlike New York - bright, sleepless, overpopulated. A police siren wailed ten stories down, and it sounded just like the ones they heard passing beneath their bedroom window. 

“That’s not fair,” it said, finally. “Using your angel voice on me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s a power imbalance.”  
“You were getting emo again.”

“Next time you do that, I’m putting sulfur in your tea.”

“Fair enough.”

“And you’re buying dinner tomorrow.”

Sorush sighed. “Fine. But remember I’ve not got tenure yet, so my salary is dreadfully low. The cost of living in New York is astronomical these days.”

Itza mocked a pout. “Oh, poor baby. Better call Mommy and get Her to send you a few extra Heaven-bucks so you can afford to take your partner on an apology date.”

“Oh, I only get paid on the first of the month, and like I said, rent’s a bitch. This trip to Beijing cost most of the month’s salary.”

“You get _ paid _ ?”

“You _ don’t _ ?”

“Crime doesn’t pay,” Itza said solemnly, putting on its best imitation of Mid-Atlantic accent. It was not accurate in the least. 

“I don’t get shit from Downstairs, damn,” it continued, returning to its usual London accent. “I have to make my money out of thin air by myself. Me conjuring the dough to take you out in the twenties very well could have caused the Great Depression.”

“I’m pretty sure the stock market crash caused the Great Depression.”

“You can’t know that for sure. I took you out to a _ lot  _ of concerts back then.”

“I think you’d have gotten a plaque or something for that, at least, if it had been your doing.”

“I don’t even get  _ paid _ for the mischief I get up to, what makes you think they’d send me a reward for anything I do? Tirelessly I work, day and night, knocking off humans and making the lives of the ones that remain a little more miserable, and nobody thanks me. They didn’t even thank me in Heaven; all they did was go ‘good job, here’s more of ‘em to rifle through’.”

Sorush sat down next to Itza on the bed, leaning their head on its shoulder. “Well, I appreciate you even if no one else does.”

Itza glared out of the window, puffing its cheeks up and trying to pretend like it hadn’t just flushed the same shade as its hair. “Shut up.”

“And it’s why I just wanted to know,” they said, closing their eyes. “Just in case.”

“Last I checked - and to be fair, it was a long time ago - nobody knew when She was supposed to set it off. Not even the angels. So how do you suppose, if not even those closest to Her know when She’s coming back, that a bunch of hairless primates in ancient Mesoamerica figured it out without even knowing who She is?”

“There’s also the blood moon,” Sorush said. “And that  _ is _ in the Bible.”

“A lunar eclipse, not even visible to the whole planet. There’s been thousands, millions of them, all throughout history. Simply the rotation of the planet and its satellite.”

“But the earthquakes...there was one here just two months ago-”

Itza began counting on its hands. “60 BCE, in Portugal, caused a tsunami I spent weeks cleaning up after. July 365 CE, that quake shoved Crete up by nine metres. Shaanxi, here in China, in 1556, the deadliest earthquake in recorded history. The Nankai earthquake in 1605, we were there for that one, remember? The Cascadia subduction quake, Lisbon, Trinidad, Chile, there was even one in Missouri - talk about diverse places - Valdivia, Alaska, San Francisco, the list goes on forever. The earth’s been shaking since the day it was made, angel. Doesn’t have anything to do with the end of the world. Just the natural shift cycles of the tectonic plates.”

“And the wars-” Sorush trailed off.

“Have been fought since the moment Adam and Eve got thrown out of Eden.”

The angel lay on the demon’s shoulder and sighed with their whole body, the smell of the smoke that lingered on Itza’s clothes as comforting as their favourite coat on a cold day. 

“We’ve just been here so long,” Sorush said. “It feels like every day the sun will rise and I’ll hear the trumpets sound and I haven’t had time to prepare. I don’t even know what will happen, if I’ll still be able to control my body, or if we’ll be like insects with a hivemind, unable to think for ourselves anymore. If they’ll  _ make _ us gather our arms and stand rank with everyone else, even if we don’t want to.”

“That’s why I’m thinking of ways out. Just in case.”

Sorush’s fingers tightened around Itza’s. “I know. But there has to be something we can do. Some...paperwork I can file that will grant me an exemption, something.”

“And if there’s nothing?”

It’s not like they hadn’t thought of it. Of the way Itza’s skin had burned theirs on the coast of Osaka, like it wanted to consume them. They’d read about Hellfire in Heaven’s libraries, about what it was used for. They knew what it would do to them. What holy water would do to Itza. The ultimate out, at the cost of eternity. 

“There’s never nothing,” Sorush said. “I’ll figure it out.”

Itza shrugged, bobbing Sorush’s head on its shoulder “Well, we’ve only got one try. After that, the cat’s out of the bag.”

Sorush looked up through the window at the starless city sky, the moon beyond its apex now, the blood now drained from its pale face. “I’ll be sure and make it a good one, then.”


	14. 2019

They were in the park when Armageddon began.

It’d been a really nice day, all things considered. Warm, but not too hot, partly cloudy to give a bit of occasional relief from the sun should one choose to wander off into the lake or some uncovered sector (but why would you, when the trees were right there, ripe for the sitting under.) They didn’t do something so cliché as pack a picnic this time, but there was a certain touristy charm to sitting in the shade of one of the ancient oaks, eating hot dogs purchased from a street vendor, and people-watching. Sorush liked to pet the dogs that passed by, keeping a tally of them in their little sketchbook. Itza preferred to mildly inconvenience the humans that it deemed lame or annoying. Which was most of them.

“If they bother you so much, why do you still live in the city?” Sorush asked, after Itza had tripped up a middle-aged man in a suit that was berating someone through his cell phone. 

The man had scuffed his Armani dress shoes, which filled Itza’s heart with glee. It willed whoever he was yelling at to find a twenty on the sidewalk on their way home (it fell from some other asshole’s pocket, so don’t go thinking this was entirely a blessing.) 

“Eh, I feel like I’d get bored anywhere else,” Itza replied, leaning back on its elbows. “‘Sides. You’re here.”

“I’d go wherever you want to, you know. I’m not married to New York.”

Itza marveled briefly at the angel’s choice of words. “I’m the one with the job that can go anywhere,” it said. “You’ve got your university stuff. I wouldn’t want to uproot you.”

“I’ve uprooted you...twice now, I think,” Sorush said, eyes locked on a greyhound wearing a bright pink martingale that was plodding its way toward them next to a young lady in a matching dress. “You stayed in London for me, and then when we moved here to America. I think that it is perfectly acceptable for you to uproot me one in a while. I can always just fake my death again.”

“I’m still amazed that’s worked out for you for so long.”

Sorush’s face was the picture of innocence, but Itza could feel, as the humans said these days, the bastard in their voice. “I have quite an impressive collection of rings from all the top universities in both England and America, now.”

Itza couldn’t help the stupid smile that spread over its face. “You never cease to amaze me.” 

The greyhound passed by, glancing at the two beings with curious but anxious eyes. Embroidered on the dog’s martingale collar were the words “DO NOT PET”. Sorush’s face fell. Itza met the dog’s eyes, willing its thoughts into her mind, gently encouraging it to say hello on its next trip around.

Sorush settled back, looking past Itza’s shoulder to spot the next potential friend. “Nobody’s said anything to me about all the fake doctorates yet, anyway, on earth or in Heaven. It’s getting tiring, though, remembering which schools I have and have not attended.”

Itza bit back a scathingly cynical comment about how it wasn’t surprised Heaven wasn’t saying anything about Sorush’s frivolous miracle usage, choosing instead to tempt a nearby goose to harass someone wearing outrageously tacky designer clothing.

“I do like it here, though,” Sorush said. “It’s never boring.”

“Angel, I feel like going to _the Yukon_ would be exciting to you. The only non-bug related time you leave the house is when I want to go to a show or eat out.”

“I wouldn’t mind going back to Canada,” they mused, ignoring Itza’s comment. “Last time I was there was before the humans had discovered it, and there wasn’t much to look at, of course.”

Itza hummed noncommittally. The goose had attracted friends, and now a veritable mob of greedy waterfowl were waddling after a group of picnicking teenagers, honking and quacking. That wasn’t its doing, that was just birds being birds. Itza was too busy trying to imagine itself driving the Mustang through the rough northern wasteland. It’d be hell on the suspension, for sure.

The daydream shifted to one of Sorush’s fingers running through its feathers, pinching the primaries and zipping them back up, smoothing out the coverts, flattening the scapulars. They’d do this sometimes, when it was safe to unfurl them, preening one another by the light of the TV. It was a relaxing dream, and Itza let its eyes slide shut, dropping its head between its shoulders. The breeze was cool, and birdsong hung in the air, just above the background drone of traffic beyond the green rectangle of Central Park. If it could stop time, it wouldn’t mind staying right in this moment for a day or two.

Itza knew about the general procession of Armageddon; Hell loved to recite it at every monthly meeting. Someone would blow a horn, all the good little humans would get poofed up to hang out with God, some crazy supernatural shit would go down, the Antichrist would awaken, and after all the Tribulations, Heaven and Hell would square off and beat the piss out of one another. Supposedly Heaven would win, according to the Great Plan, or whatever it was they were calling it up there these days. Which made the whole affair sound a bit pointless to Itza, but God didn’t seem concerned about what anyone else thought about anything.

They didn’t exactly explain, though, start of the celestial countdown would feel like the most wildly out of place spike of anxiety Itza had ever experienced.

“Are you okay?” Sorush asked, leaning forward to peer at Itza’s face, suddenly paled.

Its hands were shaking, and it’d stopped breathing. “Something’s happening,” it said quietly, eyes darting around, looking for anything out of the ordinary. Nothing but humans and birds and dogs and the occasional rat as far as the eye (and tongue,) could see.

Sorush followed its eyes with theirs. “I don’t sense anything out of the ordinary-” 

The words hung in the air, drowned out by the sound of trumpets, an all-encompassing sound that filled Itza’s ears and rattled its jaw. Sorush was sitting there, their eyes unfocused, staring into space, not breathing, not moving, caught up in the communion of the angels. Minutes felt like hours as Itza’s heart beat for two.

“Sorush?” It asked, their voice shrill, edging on panic. “Are you there?”

It wasn’t until Itza touched them, shaking their shoulder, did Sorush finally blink. Their eyes searched Itza’s face for several seconds before the spark of recognition lit within them, then immediately turned to panic.

“It’s started,” they said, and Itza didn’t need them to explain.

The End Times had begun.

  
  
  


“I don’t understand,” Sorush said despairingly, allowing themself to be dragged behind Itza as it sprinted to where the car was parked near the Met. “There weren’t any humans missing.”

“Maybe not enough of them followed the right version of the book,” Itza replied, snapping the crosswalk green and nearly causing multiple traffic accidents. “Because that most definitely was the Rapture trumpets.”

The car roared to life without Itza touching the ignition, the demon’s heavy foot peeling it out of the garage and into the street. Traffic parted around them like the Red Sea for Moses.

“Shit, shit shit shit shit,” Itza hissed. “They’re gonna want me in on this.”

“They’ve left you alone thus far, maybe-”

“This is _Armageddon_ , Sorush. The end of the world. The war of wars. You said it yourself - there won’t be a single angel or demon anywhere in the universe that isn’t called to arms. Not even us.”

Sorush stared out of the window pensively. In Itza’s vision, they shimmered brighter than usual, a pulse clearly visible in their chest. “What are we going to do?”

Itza laid on the horn as a pedestrian with a death wish stepped out into the street. “I don’t know.”

  
  
  


The drive normally took forty-five minutes in the usual traffic at this time. Itza made it in twenty.

“It’ll probably take a couple of days for everything to get into order,” Itza muttered, pacing ruts into the living room rug. “Maybe a week, if that. They’ll have to get the Antichrist to Megiddo or whatever, maybe if we went there and-”

Sorush stood across from it, nervously fidgeting with a glass of water set on an end table, which they’d previously been drinking from in an effort to calm down. “And what? Shoot him?”

“I mean it’s not an _awful_ idea,” Itza said. “I can do it from a distance if I concentrate. No guns needed.”

“You’re going to mind-murder the Antichrist.”

“It’d get the job done, wouldn’t it?”

“Would it? Would killing him even end it? There’s still the whole opening of the seals, and the Tribulations, not to mention Heaven’s been straining at the bit for this war for centuries; what makes you think they won’t just see the killing of the Antichrist as an act of aggression and attack anyway?”

Itza groaned. “If they start this, they’re gonna make us…” It didn’t want to say it.

“It’s...it’s what we were made for,” Sorush said softly. “The Great Plan.”

“Fuck the Great Plan,” Itza snarled. “Nothing great about pointless dick-measuring wars and the extinction of everything on the fucking planet. What’s the point of making it in the first place if She’s just gonna blow it up after six thousand years?”

“Well, I’m pretty sure Eden was intended to be forever…”

“Bullshit, God knew the snake was gonna come tempt Eve before She even yawned the universe into existence. All of this is just a stupid cosmic game to Her and you know it.”

Sorush had tried not to think about that possibility, but now, staring Armageddon in the face, knowing that they themselves were intended to be the vessel of God’s vengeance against the humans, She was looking less and less benevolent every second. They couldn’t even say they particularly _liked_ humanity that much - they avoided interacting with humans unless absolutely necessary, every socialization attempt a lesson in patience. They would much rather stay home and watch television with Itza.

That...that was the only reason they’d stayed on Earth. The only reason they would want to keep everything as it was. Humanity could go to Hell in a handbasket, but if Sorush was forced to go Upstairs and put on their uniform, they’d have to square off against the only being in the universe that they cared about that just so happened to be a demon.

Was that worth going against Heaven? Against God, in every conceivable way?

Itza had stopped pacing, now looking at them with the most panicked expression Sorush had seen since 1945, eyes wide and sclerotic and red. “I can’t, Sorush. If they make me go against you…”

Sometimes they wondered why they even questioned it. “We’ll figure it out, I promise,” Sorush said. “They haven’t called me yet.”

“That could be in seconds, though!” Smoke was starting to seep between Itza’s teeth, the humanity of their corporation dissolving.

Sorush made their best attempt at a smile, putting one hand on Itza’s cheek in what they hoped was a comforting gesture. “We’ve got time,” they said, the other hand touching the edge of the glass. “Even seconds is long enough.”

Itza looked down, the taste of lightning in the air. “What are you-?”

Sorush put their thumb under its chin, redirecting its gaze back to their face. “If I’m forced into this, I won’t ask you to fight me.”

“But you-”

“I’ve had time to think about it. If I have to lose you, I’d rather it be on your own terms.”

Itza looked like a wild animal. “Angel-”

“Don’t touch this unless you have to.”

Across the room, the television flickered to life on its own, Be-elzebub’s face forming out of the static. Itza shoved Sorush bodily into the kitchen, out of view of the metaphysical webcam.

The Prince’s slow English drawl poured from the surround speakers. “Well, death-dealer, you ready for the last hurrah?”

“Thought I told you I was done working wars,” Itza said, stalking closer to the screen, stuffing its shaking hands into its pockets.

“This ain’t just any war,” Be-elzebub said, unamused. “It’s Armageddon. Yer comin’ in, like or not.”

“And what if I refuse to go?”

On the screen, Be-elzebub held up a rather nasty-looking handgun in one gloved hand, and racked the slide. “You will if I have holy water pointed at your head.”

Itza swallowed thickly. “Like the angels would give you any of that.”

Be-elzebub smiled wickedly. “You would be surprised what they’re willing to cooperate on when the circumstances deem it necessary.”

They set the gun down somewhere offscreen, then turned the smile back to Itza. “The Antichrist is going to Israel tomorrow, so you’d better make your decision quick.”

“Where is the little dickens anyway, I haven’t heard anything about him ‘til this afternoon.”

“In England, though he’s one of your lot’s by blood. Naturally.”

A plane from Heathrow to Ben Gurion was-

“Six AM, IST, Itza” Be-elzebub droned. “If you’re not down here by the time the Antichrist touches Israeli soil, I’m sending escorts.”

“Yeah, got it, I’ll be there,” Itza sighed, snapping the TV off.

“Somehow I am not surprised the Antichrist is American,” Sorush said from the kitchen.

Itza was pacing again. “It takes five hours to fly from London to Israel, plus an hour give or take to drive to the desert…which gives us…” it counted on its fingers. “Not nearly enough time to figure out how we’re gonna get out of this.”

Sorush caught it by the hand and pulled it into their arms. “It’s more than seconds.”

  
  
  
  


“What if we ran away,” Itza said, looking up at the ceiling with tired eyes. “Some other galaxy, far away from here. Let the whole thing blow up, but we’d be safe.”

“I would still be summoned, even from Andromeda,” Sorush said sadly.

Itza’s held a hand up, twirling its fingers and summoning fire between them. It watched the gray-white light roll over its skin, cold and ghostlike, until Sorush reached up and closed its fingers into a fist with their hand, smothering the flame.

“Not yet,” they said. “Not unless there’s nothing else.”

“I don’t think there is anything else, angel.”

Sorush’s fingers tightened. “There has to be.”  
Itza tried to laugh, but it came out like a choked sob. “I don’t know how you can be optimistic.”

“It’s an angel thing, I think. Try to see the good in everything.”

“I never did,” Itza said. “Even...before. When I was an angel. I never could see the good in any of it, not when humanity was so cruel to itself, and us to them. Countless souls, Sorush, more than the stars. Cut down in the name of God, when they were only trying to survive. Women, children, _innocents_ who just happened to live in Egypt, in Jericho, in Mesopotamia in general during the Flood. They were always so scared, so confused. And I had to turn them away from Heaven just because they didn’t follow the arbitrary rules they’d never been told because they weren’t born into the right family.”

It laughed again, and this time the sound did turn into a sob, sticking in its throat. “And you were always the one She called to do it.”

“It was my job,” Sorush said, quietly.

“But you _liked_ it.”

“I liked being _needed_ . I liked having a _purpose_. After the silence I...had nothing. When your whole existence is created for this one singular thing, what do you do when that’s taken away? When you’re cast aside and ignored by the one Being you thought truly loved you?”

“You’re talking to a _fallen angel_ , Sorush.”

“Why do you think I gravitated towards you all those years ago? I was miserable, and what better company in my misery than someone even more useless to God than I was?”

Itza’s eyes burned. All that time under uncaring skies, and now they were here, laying on its bed in their shirtsleeves, knowing at any moment they could be snatched away, never to see each other again. Allowed to come together, then forced to stand on opposite sides of the end of the world. What a cruel, cruel joke that God had played on them both.

“Well, Heaven seems to need you now, at last,” it said, sighing. “You don’t have to be miserable anymore.”

“I haven’t been miserable since 1832, Itza, and only less and less so since.” Sorush propped themself up on their elbow, their faces close enough that Itza could see the shimmer of their breath in its heat vision. “I didn’t stay with you because I wanted to feel _needed._ I’ve stayed with you because _I love you_.”

Angels don’t lie. Twisted their words in roundabout ways, maybe, but never, never lied. It was physically, _meta_ physically, impossible. Every word out of Sorush’s mouth Itza had always taken for God’s own truth (as much as that was worth to a demon,) but this, this was something new. Something more than just the truth, something vulnerable and raw, a baring of their soul, laid open in Itza’s hands to do with as it pleased.

Its voice felt like sandpaper in its throat. “I don’t think I’m capable of returning the sentiment, the whole demon thing, you know-”

“Angels can sense it, remember? Every time we’re in the same room, it's like I’m drowning in it, like I’ll never breathe again. I just don’t think you remember what it’s supposed to feel like.”

Sorush’s face was the same as it always was, but somewhere through the centuries Itza learned to see between the lines, the way their eyes still glowed, just a little, when they were emotional, the way they were looking _at_ Itza instead of through it.

Its voice sounded far away. “And if I never remember?”

“I’ll still stay as long as you’ll have me.”

There was a soft, shifting light behind Sorush’s head, illuminating their silvery hair like a halo, their body warm against Itza’s, a pressure that grounded it, kept it in that moment as long as time would let them have it. For all the times they’d touched - laying on the couch, pressed tightly on the train, its arms around their waist as it tried to teach them to dance - none of those moments held a candle to this: foreheads pressed together while the sparks of Armageddon began to fly around them, in the breath before the flame becomes a wildfire.

It was the closest to holy Itza had felt since Heaven had cast it out.

But then the light got brighter, and Sorush disappeared, leaving behind nothing but the faint smell of ozone hanging in the air.

* * *

  
  


“Oh _ God _ , you smell awful,” The quartermaster said, curling his nose. “Like pure  _ evil _ . What on Earth were you doing down there?”

“Some last-minute business,” Sorush said wryly, looking around. Heaven was still as empty and uninviting as it’d ever been. Funny how little things change, even in six thousand years.

“You’ve got your sword, right?”

Sorush sighed, producing the blade with a twist of their wrist. “Yes.”

“Fantastic.” The quartermaster dropped a smartly-folded uniform into their hands. “Suit up. You’re to be at the front lines, of course, so make sure your creases are correct.”

“I’d really rather not,” Sorush mumbled, but the quartermaster had already stalked off somewhere else, leaving Sorush alone in the birdcage room, very small and very alone.

  
  
  


It took Itza a heartbeat to realize what had happened, and when it had, it felt like it was on fire, every single inch of its body searing with panic. In the living room it heard the television crackling on again, someone’s voice telling it to hurry the fuck up or they were dragging it down through the foundations, never mind its apartment was on the fourth floor. Begrudgingly it pulled open the armoire drawer and unearthed its previously unworn uniform, changing into it with shaking hands to fill the space while it wracked its brain for something, anything it could do to get out of this.

Nothing. Nothing it could do, nothing anyone could do. The world was ending and there wasn’t even a choice of who’s side to be on. It’d been decided for them centuries ago.

Orobas and Allocen, another of Be-elzebub’s goons, were standing outside of its door when it finally emerged, their hands inside their jackets like gangsters on TV. It lifted its hands and came willingly, accepting the private escort out of the building and into a maintenance elevator in an alley around the corner, down into the pits of Hell once more.

  
  
  
  


Sorush had never seen the war rooms, the seemingly endless spaces built to fit Heaven’s armies hundreds of millions strong. All the time they’d spent up here, they’d never seen this many angels in one place. It was breathtaking, though they weren’t sure if it was in a good way.

Michael was standing on a crystalline podium at the front of the room, resplendent in gold and pearlescent armour, glowing in the soft light. She was flanked by Archangels Sorush had never met, never knew existed, all in full regalia, swords at their hips.

Sorush slid into rank next to a fellow Ophanim, who gave them a wide-eyed stare. “Aren’t you like, the one who did all the Plagues and stuff?” he asked.

“Yep,” Sorush replied, not looking at him.

“Holy _ shit _ . I get to do one of the ones after the war. ” He grinned. “I’ve got some great ideas, gonna really show those God-damned sinners the error of their ways.”

The air in the room was tense, every single body preparing for the moment when the doors would fly open behind Michael and they’d all streak down to earth in a blaze of holy fire and defeat Hell and its demons, once and for all.

Michael was giving a rousing pep speech that Sorush was hardly listening to. At long last, as soon as the seals were opened in the Throne Room, everything they’d worked for was going to be worth it. Six thousand years of waiting. The Archangels raised their fists and led the troops in a war cry that rumbled the floors, lightning crackling around the room.

Not so long ago they’d have joined in the cacophony but now they simply stood, eyes locked to the eternal sunrise beyond glass windows and tried to keep their hands from shaking.

  
  
  
  


“So nice of you to join us,” Be-elzebub sneered as Itza was shoved into the claustrophobic hallway the demons were using as a launching point, the lake of sulfur bubbling behind it. “You’re looking  _ heavenly  _ today.”

The complement hit like vinegar on Itza’s tongue. “I’m still not going to fight in this war,” it said.

“Don’t want to have to go up against your little friend, eh? How sweet. Almost warms my cold dead heart.” 

Behind them, a ripple of jeering laughter ran through the crowd of demons at their flank. 

“Well buck up, buttercup, and grow some fuckin’ balls. Heaven won’t have mercy on you even if you have been fucking an angel for the last millennia.” Be-elzebub slapped Itza in the chest with the back of their hand. “You’re never getting your halo back, so you might as well take your revenge on the ones who took it away.”

“I’m not interested in getting revenge on Heaven, I just want to be left alone so I can live in peace.”

Behind them, Orobas grinned. “Yeh, an’ people in Hell want ice water.”

  
  
  


Something was wrong. Sorush could feel it moving through the crowd, hear it in the quiet anticipation that went from eager, to confused. The near-maniacal smile that had been plastered across Michael’s face was fading rapidly as the minutes ticked down and the doors to the war room remained closed.

“What are they doing up there?” The Ophanim next to Sorush wondered allowed, looking up at the ceiling.

Sorush had expected to hear the voice of God, the sounds of the Seraphim singing Her praises, the music of them breaking the seven Seals, the roar of the beasts in Heaven, and earth rising to join the chorus. Stars should be falling out of the sky, but Sorush could see them through the windows, hanging right where they always had.

Michael’s smile faded into a snarl, which she rounded on the Archangels behind her. “Why are the doors not opening?” She hissed, but nobody could answer her question.

  
  
  


The demons were bordering on riotous now, raising their fists over their heads and chanting for the doors to open, to let them free. Be-elzebub barked at them to shut the fuck up from atop their wooden crate pulpit, but it did little to placate them.

“If we strike first it could lead to decisive victory!” Called one froglike demon from near the back. “Hit them hard and cripple the defenses!”

“We will  _ not _ be the aggressors,” Be-elzebub hissed. “Let Heaven show its true colours, and then we will take them down.”

The minutes felt like hours, pressed into this narrow hallway, waiting for the sound of the trumpet to announce the Heavenly Host. The atmosphere was suffocating, anticipation thick in the air alongside the heat from so many bodies. Itza’s senses were scrambled, its head throbbing. It was thinking of Japan, of the ocean that disappeared, of the wolf skull, of Sorush’s fingers on its own. It was thinking about that glass of holy water on the end table in its apartment (in  _ their  _ apartment,) and how difficult it would be to summon it here.

Orobas nudged Itza with his shoulder, grinning. “Don’t look so sour,” he said in what he probably thought was a cheerful voice. “When this’s all over, there won’t be nothin’ left yer gonna hafta kill, an’ ya can run off to the mountains an’ retire.”

  
  
  


Gabriel was ordered to go see what was holding up the apocalypse, and he walked up the stairs to the top floor of Heaven as though he were heading to the gallows. The halls were silent, his footsteps echoing like thunderclaps off of the white marble floors.

The Throne Room was empty, the crystal lake in its center mirror-still, untouched. There wasn’t anyone here. There never was, but Michael didn’t need to know that. Of course now he had to come up with some excuse as to why, but he was clever. He’d figure it out.

“I don’t suppose there is actually someone hiding up here?” He said to the empty room. There was no reply. “Didn’t think so.”

He’d expected to hear the muffled sounds of singing or whatever the Seraphim do all day up here coming through the walls, or something. Maybe some harps or brass instruments; those used to be popular in the old days. This buzzing silence was almost creepy.

The room was featureless, like all the rooms were. White floors, floor-to-ceiling windows, no decorations in the room except the throne and the crystal lake. God’s taste in interior design was ahead of its time, clearly. What even was this lake for?

He looked down into it again, trying to see the bottom, if there was one. His reflection peered up at him, rippling slightly with the vibration of his footsteps.

“Gabriel,” his reflection said. “What are you doing up here?”

“Seeing if God’s around,” he replied, as though this were normal. “I thought blowing the horn and triggering the End Times would wake Her up, but I suppose not.”

“I’m not asleep, Gabriel,” said his reflection. “And that wasn’t your job to do.”

He felt annoyance prickle the back of his neck. “We’re all tired of waiting. Hell grows stronger by the second, and if we wait too long we won’t be able to win the numbers game.”

“Do you doubt me, Gabriel? Do you not think that Heaven will prevail?”

“Well, nobody’s heard from You in a very long time…”

“Would you like to construct a gilded calf as well?”

It took him a moment to realize he was being scolded. “Oh, no Lord, of course not, it wasn’t like that-”

“You just thought you could do My job for Me, because you thought I was asleep?”

“No, I-”

Gabriel was suddenly aware of the smell of burning hair. His feet felt hot, like the floor was on fire, and he shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot.

“It was not your place to call the Rapture, Gabriel,” his reflection said. “You have no authority to act in My stead; your impatience is unbecoming of an Archangel.”

“I wasn’t trying to-”

“It’s not very polite to lie to Me,” said his reflection, which didn’t look very much like him anymore. It looked more like a demon, which should have been more concerning than it was, considering he was pretty sure he was talking to God Herself.

“But I’m not-” he began, but that is when his reflection reached out of the lake and dragged him beneath the surface and into the depths of Hell.

  
  


The impact of the Archangel Falling through the center of Hell was like an earthquake, the walls shaking so hard they seemed to ripple, threatening to bury the demons beneath the crumbling ceiling. One of the buzzing fluorescent lights popped out of its housing, shattering at Itza’s feet.

The mob was distracted for a moment by the arrival of the newcomer, the crowds moving from the cramped corridors out into the balconies surrounding the pit, leaning over the sides to see who emerged.

Itza didn’t want to know. At best it would be some pissant angel that got on Gabriel’s bad side. At worst…

It didn’t want to think about “at worst”.

“Let’s all greet our newest member of the family! Just in time to pay back the one who banged the gavel!” Be-elzebub announced, holding out their hands. They gestured down into the lake of sulfur, as what used to be the Archangel Gabriel crawled out onto the bank, his clothing awash in blue flame, his wings charred black.

“Ho-lee shit,” Orobas breathed into Itza’s ear, but Itza barely heard him over the pounding of its pulse.

If Gabriel had Fallen, did that mean-

The demon that once was Gabriel pulled himself to his knees, thick yellow liquid pooling at his feet. He looked up at Be-elzebub and the army behind them, a wicked grin spreading across his face. “You’re wasting your time,” he said, coughing up globs of sulfur. “It was a false alarm.”

Be-elzebub’s smile faltered. “What are you talking about?”  
He laughed. “The trumpet, the Rapture, the beginning of the war. It was fake, it wasn’t real. This isn’t Armageddon.”

“How do you know?”

The newborn demon’s smile widened. “‘Cause I’m the one that blew the horn.”

  
  
  
  


Sorush’s head was spinning. Armageddon had been cancelled - or rather it hadn’t even started. The Throne Room was empty, and Gabriel was gone. No Seraphim singing songs of praise, no Seals to break, no stars to fall. No plagues to unleash. No war to fight.

Any semblance of rank had been broken now, half of the room clutching at their chest as the aftershocks ricocheted around the war room, half begging Michael and the Archangels to explain to them what was happening. Every single angel in the room had felt Gabriel’s Fall, that gut-wrenching sensation of loss that Sorush was all too familiar with. They’d felt it before, five thousand years ago, when Heaven’s psychopomp asked too many questions.

“This can’t be happening,” they heard Michael gasp as they slipped past her and through a side door.

Sorush wasn’t sure what their plan was, except: Get out. Get out and find Itza. They’d figure the rest out together. They always had.

They took the stairs two by two, pushing open every door, trying to find the birdcage room, the only way they knew back to get back down to Earth. The last time they’d stood over the transportation circle they hadn’t known where they wanted to go, choosing the forests of ninth century Japan simply because it was the first place they’d thought of. Now their destination was at the forefront of their mind, pulling at their core. They realized they’d known where they wanted to be for a long, long time.

  
  
  
  


The air in Hell was stale and lacking in oxygen and there was no elbow room in the corridors, the press of bodies so tight that it could only fill its lungs through its mouth. The colours were starting to dance behind its eyes, the migraine starting in its temples, but no matter how many times it told itself it didn’t _ need  _ to breathe, if Itza didn’t have oxygen it started to panic.

The air felt electric down here, the force of so many demons with bloodlust in their eyes. Itza braced itself to suck in another gulp of blinding pink, but what it saw instead was white, the smell of ozone filling its nose. The smell of angels. The smell of home. 

The demons shrunk back into the corridors like a Marangoni effect, leaving Itza alone on the balcony, unflinching as the air around it crackled with electricity. It closed its eyes a practiced beat before the air ignited in a phosphorous flash.

“Oh,” said Sorush. “I didn’t know I could come here.”

Itza couldn’t suppress the smile that crept across its face. “Hey, angel.”

“Hello Itza,” they said, their voice the sweetest music to Itza’s ears. “Are you ready to go?”

“I don’t think so,” snapped Be-elzebub, shouldering their way from behind Allocen (who they’d definitely not been intending to use as a meat shield, should it be necessary.) “A Fallen Archangel the end of a war does not make. The trumpet call might have been fake, but that doesn’t mean Heaven won’t charge us regardless, and yer place is here with me. Not up there with them.”

“I said I don’t work wars anymore,” Itza hissed. “I quit.”

Be-elzebub held out their hands, exasperated. “How many times do I have to tell you, you  _ can’t quit _ . Yer a demon, this is yer life. Yer entire existence. You don’t have a say in it, and hiding behind angels isn’t gonna save you.” 

They shoved their hands in their pockets, stepping closer to the balcony. Beside them, Orobas was pulling the holy water gun from his coat, pointing it at Itza’s face. “Please don’t make me kill you,” Be-elzebub said. “Yer kind are so few and far between.”

“Then you’d better start looking fast,” Itza said, reaching out and wrapping its hand around the grip of Sorush’s sword, ripping it from its sheath.

It felt like thrusting its arm into magma, setting every nerve in its body alight. It swung out blindly, both its eyes and its mouth sensing nothing but searing, white-hot pain as holy power charged up its spine. It stepped forward, the blade moving in a smooth upward arc through the air an extension of Itza’s arm, nearly melding with its hand. The sword came back down at Allocen’s neck, and there was no resistance as it cleaved his head from his neck, his body collapsing into so many sparks that fizzled to ash on the dirty concrete floor.

It could hear Sorush’s voice through the roar in its ears, feel their hands clench around its own, wrenching the sword out of its grip, taking some of its skin with them. The wound cauterized instantly, not a single drop of blood lost.

Vision came back to Itza like it does after staring at the sun, a pulsing, flickering white, disorienting in the darkness. Everything tasted like fire but the look on Be-elzebub’s face was worth it as they staggered backwards, vulnerable without their goons to take hits for them. The wall of demons shrunk back again, unwilling to sacrifice themselves, even for their Prince.

It felt Sorush’s shoulder press into theirs, the brush of their wingtips over its shoulder, their fingers gripping its ruined hand. They looked wild in the edges of Itza’s vision, their face like fire, halos circling around their head, sword held out in front of them. White and gold and silver in its mind and glowing like the eyes that erupted within their wings, their face, so spectacular and terrifyingly beautiful, and it realized all in a rush that against all odds it loved them back, and may always have.

“Oh, I fucking knew it,” said the demon that once was Gabriel, sneering. “There always was something off about you, both of you.”

Sorush’s eyes flashed in the light, their jaw tightening. When they’d seen Itza for the first time after Falling it was like being gut-punched, but looking at Gabriel’s ruined form, the corruption in his eyes, feathers falling from his wings like ashen leaves, they felt nothing but self-righteous anger.

“You’ll never guess who did the honours of kicking me out,” he continued, cackling. “ _ God Herself _ .”

He didn’t even get the dignity of being decapitated by the sword. The lightning struck him where he stood, engulfing him in the flames of holy judgement, leaving little more than dust behind.

“Traitor,” Be-elzebub hissed, but their eyes were full of fear, flicking from Itza, still alight, to the angel standing beside it. “Both of you.”

“I never chose your side,” Itza snarled, residual lightning crackling from its fingertips. “I never chose _ any  _ side, I was  _ forced _ into both of them against my will, but I’m done with the bullshit. I’m  _ through _ .”

“There’ll be another war, someday, if this one doesn’t take off. You can’t run away forever. Yer gonna have to pick a side eventually.”

Itza could feel itself being ripped apart at the seams, the lightning burning holes in its atoms, light seeping through the cracks in its skin. “We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.”

Its legs gave out from under it, but Sorush caught it before it fell.


	15. Epilogue

Extremely long-distance self-teleportation was hard on the body. Even though the Heaven/Hell-issued vessels were more durable than your standard human one, they still didn’t enjoy being dismantled and thrown halfway across the planet within milliseconds, and you ran the risk of discorporation if you do it too often. It should be saved for emergencies only, according to the handbook that absolutely nobody reads.

Itza was in no way fit for the journey that Sorush took it on, but going back home felt like flirting too closely with extermination, and so they risked the jump, wrapping themselves around the unconscious demon to protect it best they could.

When they reappeared, Itza’s body was cracking and splitting apart in their hands, its atoms struggling to stay together. Its battered, burnt vessel longed desperately to release the consciousness trapped within it and finally become dust. Sorush knew that even if Itza’s body failed, its soul - and they never thought they’d think of a demon as having a soul, but what else would you call it? - was not guaranteed to make it back to Earth afterwards. The only punishment for traitors is death. A true death, complete destruction by whatever means Hell could dream up. And that was if its soul survived at all - how would they know if the damage done by a holy weapon would simply discorporate, and not kill outright?

Sorush didn’t want to find out. If they had to grab its soul and put it back themself, so be it. They didn’t go to the bowels of Hell to lose like this.

They were not a being of creation - that wasn’t the purpose they were given in the beginning when God brought them into existence. They could not form the stars from the dust in their hand, they couldn’t mould clay into a creature and breathe life into its lungs. They couldn’t even strum a harp’s strings and have it sound like anything other than the uncoordinated plinking of an amateur. Their hands were made for the opposite - to cast the stars from where they hung to bathe the earth in fire, to open the throats of the creatures and leave them bleeding on the ground, their screams the only music Sorush knew how to play.

But they had learned a few things in their time on earth, and one of them was this: A long time ago humans thought that if you wrote the right formula on paper and put the right materials together, one could turn lead into gold. They’d never gotten it to work, but the concept was solid - if you broke something down to its base components, the pieces could be rearranged into something new. Nothing can be gained without sacrificing something in return. Destruction and creation, the two sides of one coin. Equal, and opposite.

And so an angel of destruction reached into a demon and tried to imagine the opposite of what it had the talent to do, wrapping their hands around the atoms of Itza’s being and forcing them to stay together, piece by piece by piece.

  
  
  


\---

  
  
  


Sorush sat in a chair in a little house somewhere in northern Greenland, watching Itza as it lay on their couch, wondering if each shallow breath would be its last. Its extremities shimmered like a heat haze for hours, but finally, achingly, solidified and stayed still. 

The sun was at its peak just below the horizon when Itza finally seemed to wake up, eyelids squeezing together in pain before slowly sliding open. It turned to face them but Sorush couldn’t tell if it could even see, its eyes dilated, disoriented.

“Sorush?” it asked, trying to sit up but falling back down with a hiss. “Oh, _ fuck _ .”

“I wouldn’t try to move too much,” Sorush said. “I tried my best, but I’ve never exactly tried to  _ save _ anyone’s life before, so it was all a bit new to me.”

“I feel like I got blown up in an air raid,” it groaned. “Everything hurts.”

“Well, in a way that’s not a bad thing. If you hurt, it means you’re probably not paralyzed.”

Itza wiggled its fingers, then its toes. “Don’t seem to be.”

It tried to sit up again, gritting its teeth against the vertigo. Every joint in its body screamed, but it pushed through anyway, holding onto the back of the couch for support. It took stock of itself then, rolling up its singed sleeves to see the Lichtenberg figure radiating up its arm, originating from a hand now burnt and blistered. Its hair, shoulder length only a few hours ago, was nearly completely burnt off, and Sorush told it to not even bother with its wings. It would only get upset.

“I’m alive, at least,” it sighed. “Don’t think I’ll be trying to use your sword again, though, shit. Once was enough for me.”

“I would greatly appreciate it if you didn’t.”  
The couch Itza was laying on was set underneath a window, and it propped itself up against the sill, gazing out at the frozen tundra. A thick blanket of snow covered everything as far as the eye could see, the horizon gray and streaked in silver by a sun that wouldn’t rise for months. It was probably beautiful in colour, but you couldn’t taste the sky.

“So it was a red herring,” it said, its breath condensing on the glass.

“Seems that way.”

“Eventually it’ll happen for real, and we’ll have to go through this again, you know. We made it out this time, but...”

“We’ll figure it out. We’ve got time now.”

“That’s what we thought before.”

“And we were right.”

A peculiar feeling settled into Itza’s chest as it turned away from the window to look at Sorush.

“I just don’t want this to cause problems for you with Heaven.”

“I’ve done nothing wrong.”

“I highly doubt fraternizing with a demon for a hundred years then stealing it from Hell is  _ nothing _ .”

Sorush looked at Itza, meeting its eyes willingly for the first time. “It’s not a sin to love you, no matter what the humans think. If it were, I think I’d have fallen centuries ago.”

“Just promise me you won’t,” it said. “Not just for me.”

“I won’t.”

They sat there in silence, listening to the wind blow around the corners of the house, watching the drifts pile up outside. The air inside the little house was cold, but Itza didn’t feel it, its heart like a sun within its chest.

“So,” Sorush said finally. “What do we do now?”

Itza shrugged. “We’re fugitives now, from both Heaven and Hell, I suppose we can do whatever we want.”

“What  _ do _ you want?”

“I’m thinking we should get out of Manhattan,” Itza said after some thought. “A change of scenery, something a little different for the do-over. Maybe the West Coast, in the mountains. Get a little farm for the horses or something, live simple for a while.” It turned to meet Sorush’s eyes. “Unless you’ve got other plans.”

Sorush hummed. “It’d be nice to travel a bit, before settling down again. We’ve been in New York for a long time.”

“Yeah? Any ideas?”

“We never did get to go to Madagascar,” Sorush said, smiling. “I hear there’s lots of weird animals there.”

“So I’ve heard.”

Outside, the sky erupted into ripples of light, flowing like ribbons over the mountains. Silver-white streaks like god-rays in Itza’s monochrome vision, dancing through the air to the beat of the songs only they knew the words to, singing along in their wavering voices, almost too quiet to hear.

“Do you think you’ll miss it?” Itza asked, softly.

“No,” Sorush said, looking up at the stars. “Heaven hasn’t felt like home for a long, long time.”

“And a high-rise apartment with a demon does?”

“Yes,” Sorush said, as though this were the greatest truth in the universe.

Itza studied them, an amused smile spreading in its face. “You’re a weird-ass angel, you know. Decent, but weird.”

“Well, you’re a  _ terrible _ demon.” They laughed. “We are a match made in-”

Itza groaned. “Please don’t say Heaven. Heaven’s already had far too much to do with the events of my life the past twenty-four hours.”

“Then I won't,” Sorush said. “But it’s true.”

They leaned forward, pointing up at the sky. “We’re close enough to the pole that some of them are glowing red, up at the top,” they said.

Itza’s eyes followed their finger, and it squinted up at the sky, looking intently at the tail end of the streamers, but all it saw was the same gray as the rest of the sky. It would never know how much of the show it was missing simply because all it could see was tone.

Sorush stood, humming softly as they padded into the tiny kitchenette. The furniture in their little Arctic vacation house was unsurprisingly sparse, but somehow they had found a kettle to set on the two-burner stove, and a pair of cups in the cabinet that Itza wasn’t convinced they hadn’t sneakily miracled in themselves.

“Try this,” Sorush said, handing Itza both cups. “Left hand first, then the right.”

From the smell, this combination seemed like a terrible idea. Traditional Chinese herbal tea combined with spiced oolong wasn’t exactly what Itza would have chosen to pair together, but Sorush had this  _ look  _ in their eye, and so it lifted the first cup to its lips and sipped.

The first thing it realized was that it was pretty damn good tea, despite the odd combination, and there was no way that Sorush had acquired it naturally all the way out here on a glacier.

The second thing it realized was that the lights in the sky were suddenly overlaid in rust-red and a dazzling emerald green, glittering and swirling behind Itza’s eyes.

“Oh,” it said, breathless.

“I’ve been taking notes,” Sorush said. “I hope I got the right colours.”

Itza sipped the tea again, a little more of the green than the red this time, watching as the sky erupted again into colour once more.

“There’s little flashes of gold in the aurora, too, but I don’t remember you ever mentioning what tasted like-”

Gently, Itza set the cups on the windowsill before reaching across the gap between them and grabbing a fistful of Sorush’s jacket. It pulled them down into its lap, breathing them in, filling their mouth with lights that made the aurora look like two-dollar fireworks.

“You do,” it whispered. “You do.”

Above, the lights whipped through the sky, flickering like flames under the endless sea of stars. And beneath them, in a little one-room house with snow-drifts piling up against the whitewashed clapboard siding, an angel and a demon sat on a couch inside watching the aurora dance together hand-in-hand, like it was the first time they’d ever seen them.

**Author's Note:**

> Follow my further exploits and see art of these characters on my Tumblr @catouatche, and Twitter @katouatche!


End file.
